Artist Profiles

Zhu Ming

(born 1972, Hangsha, Hunan Province, China) Zhu Ming’s performance work deals with the passage of time, physical extremes, isolation and attempts at communication or the futility and ephemeral nature of these attempts. John Clark describes the work as “...a kind of conceptualism verging on Zen absorption into the object or into the trance of the performance.” Zhu Ming was one of the artists who lived at Beijing East Village in the early 1990s. The East Village was considered the most experimental of the artists’ villages in and around Beijing at that time and many artists from there have gone on to international renown. The art produced by the East Village artists already has a unique place among collections of contemporary Chinese art, the most famous work being the group performance “To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain”, 1995, in which Zhu Ming participated. The early performance works were outstanding in themselves but even more so for being produc! ed in a vacuum of rigid social conformity. Other well known artists from this group are the performance artists Ma Liuming, Zhang Huan and the photographer Rong Rong. Zhu Ming is also known for his “Bubble” performances in which the artist encloses himself in a plastic sphere and sets out to sea. He has performed his “Bubble” piece in China, Australia and the USA. Zhu Ming currently lives in Beijing.

Other Works By This Artist [ click to view larger images ]