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Artist:
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Zhang Huan
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Title:
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1/2 (Text)
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Date:
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1998
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Medium:
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C-print
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Dimensions:
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36 3/4 x 29 1/4 in. (93.35 x 74.3 cm) (image)
44 1/2 x 37 1/8 in. (113.03 x 94.3 cm) (sight)
46 1/2 x 39 in. (118.11 x 99.06 cm) (outer frame)
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Credit Line:
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Gift of Gordon Locksley and Dr. George T. Shea
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Location:
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Gallery 374
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Shortly before Zhang Huan left his native China to temporarily relocate to the United States, he performed a work of art in which he invited friends to write phrases or words on his face and body with black ink. In this resulting self-portrait, Huan's ethnicity is literally inscribed on his body. Yet for most Western viewers the text is unreadable. 1/2 (Text) is a visual metaphor for the difficult transcultural experience upon which Zhang was about to embark. As an Asian body circulating within a Western culture, would Zhang himself be as difficult to understand as his language? He said, "The body is the only direct way through which I come to know society and society comes to know me. The body is the proof of identity. The body is language."
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Artist/Creator(s)
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Name:
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Huan, Zhang
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Role:
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Photographer
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Nationality:
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Chinese
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Life Dates:
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Chinese, born 1965
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Object Description
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Inscriptions:
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Label
on back, on label: untranslated inscription
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Classification:
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Photographs
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Physical Description:
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head, torso and arms of a man with Chinese characters written in black on his face, arms and body
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Creation Place:
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Asia, China, , ,
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Accession #:
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2010.9
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Owner:
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The Minneapolis Institute of Arts
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