Sheng Qi is a committed artist. He led one of Chinese contemporary art's earliest performance art group; Concept 21. But only in 1989, did he drastically fluster people's mind, when he chose to use his body as a field of protest. Reportedly distressed by the massacre of Tiananmen Square, Sheng Qi chopped-off the pinky on his left hand and buried it in a flowerpot, which remained in Beijing during his European exile. He returned to China in 1998, convinced that he still has much more to say about his homeland. His radical gesture was his definite starting point to numerous contestations and questionings on China's omnipresent old haunting ghosts that he today decides to crystallize and demystify in his paintings.
Sheng Qi (b.1965)
Red Mao
2008
240 x 180 cm / 94.5 x 70.9 inches
Acrylics on canvas
Signed and dated on the reverse