Zhang Huan is a Chinese performance artist, painter, photographer, and sculptor. Perhaps best known for performances that test his own physical and mental endurance, Zhang creates symbolic self-portraits that question the role of family and culture in shaping contemporary life. 

Family Tree consists of nine sequential images of Zhang Huan’s face, taken from dusk to dawn. As the images progress, Zhang’s face and shaved head is gradually covered by calligraphy (written by three calligraphers) until it is completely black. This performance aimed to represent Huan’s lineage, with the calligraphers writing names of his family members, as well as personal stories, Chinese folktales and poems and random thoughts. The blacking out of Zhang’s face by the end of the process served as a metaphor for the way that his identity might be entirely subsumed by his heritage. The density of cultural history obscures the individual, only for it to become clear again in the final image, where Zhang appears more animated and the legibility of the writing has entirely faded.

Throughout his practice, the artist regularly tackles issues of politics, religion, and overpopulation in China. By using materials like ash and incense as well as subjects like Confucius and the Buddha, Zhang draws attention to his cultural history and the complicated ways he identifies and rejects it. http://www.artnet.com/artists/zhang-huan/

Zhang Huan’s works are both highly personal and politicised, dealing with complex issues of identity, spiritualism, vulnerability, and transgression. His practice focuses on no one particular media but rather incorporates a wide variety of tactics – from performance to photography, installation, sculpture, and painting — utilising each method for its physical and symbolic associations. This unique approach to making reinforces the inter connectivity of the concepts and recurrent motifs running throughout of Zhang’s work, and mirrors an underlying sentiment of shared human experience and bond. https://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/zhang_huan.htm

Zhang’s early “Body Experiments,” part of this post-Tiananmen, avant-garde movement, explore themes of existentialism and corporeality. By using his body as the site of representation, Zhang’s performances, documented through photographs, illustrate the artist’s belief in the ultimate relief or transcendence that can be achieved through endurance. Among these abject yet lyrical performances, 12 Square Meters was a breakthrough work.