Collectively titled Binding the Lost Souls: Huge Explosion Series, 1993 the four pieces - Memory Loss, Black Cola, Cavern-Strategy and Huge Explosion - took a year of preparation and the recruitment of several score of local residents and a group of artists assembled by Zheng to complete. It was shortly thereafter in 1988 that Zheng turned his attention to the Great Wall as a backdrop for what has come to be considered among the most seminal performance works in post-Tiananmen (June 4th 1989) China.īetween September 21 and October 7 of 1993, Zheng created a series of four performances held at the Great Wall, near Si Ma Tai, in Hebei Province. Despite the lack of formal education, in 1986 at the age of 23, Zheng founded one of the first night schools of fine art in Beijing. Zheng Lianjie belongs to the generation of Chinese artists most shaped by the harshness and excess of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), when all but the most basic of educational facilities were shut down by government authorities. 149īeijing, Millenium Art Museum Buffalo, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, The Wall: Reshaping Contemporary Chinese Art, 21 October, 2005-29 January, 2006, illustrated in the catalogue p. Guangzhou, Guangdong Museum of Art, The First Guangzhou Triennial Reinterpretation: A Decade of Experimental Chinese Art (1990-2000), 2002, illustrated in the catalogue, p. New York, Asian American Art Center, Reappearance of Exit IV: Performance Art of Zheng Lianjie, 2002

Pinyao, Second Annual International Photography Festival, 2002 (60 1/4 x 47 1/4 in.) Footnotesįukuoka Asian Art Museum, Documentation of Chinese Avant-garde art in the 90s, 2000

Signed in pinyin and Chinese, numbered 1/15 and dated 1993 (lower left)ġ20 x 153 cm. Binding The Lost Souls: Huge Explosion 1993 Great Wall

Binding of the lost