Yang Zhichao’s performance art at the margins: Within the Fourth Ring Road (1999) and the Chinese contemporary

Journal
Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art
ISSN
2051-7041
2051-705X
Type
journal article
Date Issued
2023
Author(s)
;
DOI
Abstract
This article explores the theme of marginality in the art of Yang Zhichao, a critically and socially engaged experimental artist who has been active in China since the mid-1980s. Yang’s oeuvre – which includes performance artworks, drawings and installations – revolves around the issue of sociocultural marginality in reform-era society, from the condition of migrant workers, beggars and psychiatric patients to the borderlands of Chinese civilization and the condition of the avant-garde artist. Drawing also on Chinese art criticism and two interviews with the artist, this study examines in particular the performance <jats:italic>Within the Fourth Ring Road</jats:italic> (1999) through its photographic and literary documentation. While writing on Yang Zhichao’s art has largely focused on his most extreme performances of ‘body art’ such as <jats:italic>Planting Grass</jats:italic> (2000), the artwork at the centre of this study highlights an anti-spectacular approach to performance art and reflects Yang’s stated belief in the importance of placing oneself in the circumstances of marginalized people in order to move beyond a voyeuristic gaze. Through a critical analysis of said approach the article reveals a quality that pervades Yang Zhichao’s multi-disciplinary artistic career – that is, its ‘contemporariness’, in Giorgio Agamben’s sense as a focus on the darkest, most emblematic aspects of one’s society and time.
Language
English
Refereed
Yes
Publisher
Intellect
Publisher place
Bristol
Volume
10
Number
1
Start page
205
End page
225
Pages
21
Official URL
URL