Sunday at the Met to Feature: "Family Tree" by Chinese Born Artist Zhang Huan

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS  NEWS
By TAHLIB

"Family Tree" (2001) by Zhang Huan (Chinese, born Anyang, 1965)

NEW YORK---In a remarkable exhibition, "Ink Art: Past as Present in Contemporary China" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one iconoclastic work stands out: "Family Tree" by Chinese born Artist Zhang Huan. Created in 2001, less than two years after his move to New York, Zhang uses his face as a surface on which words, names, and stories connected to his cultural heritage are, literally, written in ink. It's a performance piece documented in nine photographs that records the gradual obscuring of Zhang’s face with inked words and names until it is completely blackened. "Ink Art" is the first major exhibition of Chinese contemporary art ever mounted by the Metropolitan and is presented in the museum's permanent galleries for Chinese art, so that the artworks can be understood as part of a cultural continuum including the Buddhist philosophy of control, meditation, and letting go. Huan's work will be featured this Sunday during Sunday at the Met discussion series.