Body Art in China

Yang Zhichao's Diary from a Psychiatric Ward

Datos Bibliográficos

ID12423734
AutoresGiorgio Strafella (0000-0001-6133-394X, Palacký University Olomouc, autor de correspondencia), Daria Berg (0000-0001-7453-3545, University of St.Gallen)
Año2023
Volumen31
Número3
Páginas571-596
Fecha de publicación2023-05-12
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
Revistapositions asia critique (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1067-9847 • E-ISSN: 1527-8271
EditorialDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/10679847-10441260
OpenAlexW4376271785
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas24

This study aims to trace how artists in postsocialist China have adopted the discourse of body art and reshaped its import of sociopolitical criticality. In this article, “body art” implies the use of the human body as the primary material of artistic creation and the performance of actions of cruelty, modification, and endangerment on the artist's body. Through an engagement with theories of embodiment, biopolitics, and postsocialism, this article argues that body art represents one way in which the corporeal assumes a new centrality in China's post-1978 avant-garde and popular culture, as both a reappropriated territory of self-expression and an alienated object of consumption and surveillance. To do so, it discusses body art by Yang Zhichao 杨志超 (b. 1962), focusing in particular on a performance artwork titled Jiayuguan 嘉峪关 (Jiayu Pass, 1999 – 2000) and its documentation by the artist. As a result, this article shows how body art encapsulates the tension between dystopian negativity and regenerative potential at the heart of the postsocialist condition

Aesthetics · Art · Biopower · China · Dystopia · Expression (computer science · Human body · Literature · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Visual arts · Body Image and Dysmorphia Studies · Diversity and Impact of Dance · Law · Medicine · Tattoo and Body Piercing Complications