Ma Liuming (Chinese: 马六明, born 1969 in Huangshi, Hubei province) is a contemporary Chinese painter active in performance art. He is known most of all for his exploration of the power and poetry of public nudity in China, where such behavior was strictly forbidden. As a result, he has been the target of government censorship, unable to perform in his own country for most of his career.
In 1981, Ma Liuming started to study oil painting with tutor Cai Erhe. He graduated from Hubei Institute of Fine Arts in 1991 (MFA) in the Oil Painting Department. Two years later, he was one of the founders of Beijing East Village, an artists colony on the outskirts of Beijing. In the early 1990s it became a nexus for experimental art forms. One of Ma Liuming's first performances was called "Fen-Ma Liuming's Lunch 1", a collaboration with Zhang Huan and Zhu Ming in 1994. He sat, completely nude, sucking a plastic tube that was attached to his penis. In 1994 Ma Liuming was arrested for a period of two months because of works like this. Many of the artists of the Beijing East Village fled in response to this police action.
In order to match his own uniquely androgynous appearance Ma Liuming developed his own performance persona – Fen-Ma Liuming, a hybrid figure of male and female components.
Next to performances painting is a key component in his works. Since 2000, he has developed his "Baby series", in which the face of Fen-Ma Liuming appears on infant's bodies. It is a surrealistic image that is both disturbing and laughable. Through different mediums such as performance, painting and photography Ma Liuming continues to investigate the limits of provocation, seducing his audience into considering more intriguing matters.
Fen-Ma Liuming Fen-Ma Liuming () was the name Ma Liuming gave to distinguish his performance from himself. Fen-Ma Liuming was a transgender creation with woman's face and dresses but has a man's body. The initial idea of Fen-Ma Liuming was born in the 1990s when Ma was still an undergraduate in Hubei Academy of Fine Arts. Ma used to wrap his naked body with plastic wrap while modeling for student to do the life drawing, later on, Ma considered this as his first performance.
In 1993, Ma quit his job and moved to the Beijing artists' colony known as the East Village to start his career as a contemporary Chinese painter and pioneer of Chinese performance art. Although the living condition in the East Village was tough, Ma and his colleagues expressed their passion and creativity to contemporary art during this time period. At the end of Ma's first year in the East Village, two British visitors came to the village and had huge impact on Ma, perhaps changed the current of his life. The openly gay artistic couple, Gilbert and George, inspired Ma to turn to performance art as the main medium of his artistic expression.
One night, Ma was persuaded by his friends to wear woman's make-up and clothes. When the time Ma saw the sight of himself in the mirror, he was shocked. According to his words: I felt frightened, but also felt that I was ready for a bigger change. So I changed my clothes, and dressed in a girl's long skirt. I had the idea to create art using only make-up and my body.Li, Danni. "What Happened to Fen-Ma Liuming? " ArtZine. Web. 2 May 2012. This was the birth of Fen-Ma Liuming.
Since that was the early time period of the 1990s, nude performance was appalling for the public. In 1994, Ma was arrested by police when he was doing the performance in the East Village. During the time Ma was in prison, he became famous in the Chinese contemporary art world and his work- Fen Ma Liuming was interpreted as a political symbol. After two months, Ma was released and sent back to Beijing.
This event changed Ma's performing style in a dramatic way. Before his arrest, Fen-Ma Liuming expressed the duality of pleasure with cruelness, and mercy following tragedy. But after Ma was released, the expression of the performance became the concern of the life and society, which is the unsafe and dangerous emotion he had at that time.
In 1996, Fen-Ma Liuming had its first show outside China at the 1996 Tokyo International Performance Art Festival. In a dark performance hall, Fen-Ma Liuming lit matches one by one to illuminate different parts of his body. When the theatre lights came finally came up, he presented himself fully with a woman's face and a man's body. According to his own word: In China, performance art was underground, and the conditions were simple and rough. In art festivals outside China, the partners were professional, and we went over every detail. After talking with some overseas artists, my views and thoughts changed.
After the show in Tokyo, Fen-Ma Liuming executed "Fen-Ma Liuming Walks the Great Wall", a performance in which the artist walked along an unspecified segment of the Great Wall without any clothes on. Shing-Kwan Chan argues that the performance was staged on a historical site constructed to divide and segregate, which, in a way, symbolically represents the dichotomous gender division of male and female.
After the late 1990s, Fen-Ma Liuming was welcomed by most performance art festivals and art exhibitions. In a performance in Lyon, France in 2001, Ma took some sleeping pills and rendered himself motionless. Then the audiences were invited to come on stage and take photo with Fen-Ma Liuming. The idea of this sleeping version of Fen-Ma Liuming is to blur the boundary between man and woman, self and non-self. The final performance of Fen-Ma Liuming was at the 2002 Asia Performance Art Festival in Fukuoka, Japan. Ma said: I hope Fen-Ma Liuming will remain in a kind of beautiful permanent, ageless state. But now my body language no longer has the characteristics of Fen-Ma Liuming.
Oil painting Most of Ma Liuming's oil paintings are all about Fen-Ma Liuming. In the canvases, Fen-Ma Liuming was portrayed as an infant with big head and fat baby hands. After Ma stopped his performance, he started a new series of works. In Ma's new works, a contorted human being appears against a dark color background. Concerning this series of painting, Ma explained: When my son opened his eyes at the very first time, if he saw my paintings, this is what he would have seen.
Selected exhibitions and performances 2008 Avant-Garde China: Twenty Years of Chinese Contemporary Art The National Art Center, Tokyo/The National Museum of Art, Osaka/Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art Japan 2007 Marella Gallery, 798 Factory, Beijing, China (solo) A Brief Introduction of Ma Liuming, Galería Dolores de Sierra, Madrid, Spain (solo) Art Taipei 2007, Star 85 Art Space, Taipei, Taiwan Three Language Three Colors, UM Gallery, Korea Political Art, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow Timerol, Intimacy, Triennale, Milan, Italy Dragon's Evolution, New York China-Square Art Center, USA Art Now – Shanghai, Beijing Art Now Gallery (Shanghai Station) Photography of Performance in China, Ying Gallery, 798 Factory, Beijing, China 2006 The Great Performance, Max Protech Gallery, New York, USA (group) Long March Capital, Long March Space, Factory 798, Beijing, China (group) 2006 China Contemporary Art Festival, Korea (group) A Point in Time, Wuhan City Fine Arts Literature, Wuhan, China (group) Ma Liuming, Marella Gallery, Milan, Italy (solo) Ma Liuming, Ma Liuming in Seoul, South Korea (solo) Jiang Hu, Tilton Gallery, New York, U.S.A (group) Re-Excavate the Contemporary Realism, Soka Art Center, Beijing, China (group) Process & Expression, Star 85 Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan (group) Unclear and Clearness – Contemporary Chinese Art, Korea Artside Gallery, Seoul, Korea (solo) Marella Gallery, Milan, Italy (solo) Art Taipei 2006, Taipei, Taiwan 2004–2006 Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video From China, The Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, USA; Smart Museum of Art, Chicago, USA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, USA; International Center for Photography, New York, USA 2005 Ma Liuming: Chosen Images, Aura Gallery, Shanghai, China Mahjong, Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, Switzerland China, Palazzo Saraceni and San Giogio in Poggiale, Bologna, Italy Dream Producers (II/VI): The Imaginary Museum of Chinese Contemporary Art, Xin Dong Cheng Space for Contemporary Art, Factory 798, Beijing Prague Biennale 2, Prague The Gesture. A Visual Library in Progress, Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Greece The Strange Heaven-Contemporary Chinese photography, Finland Ma Liuming, Gallery Albert, Paris, France (solo) Ma Liuming, Beijing Art Now Gallery, Beijing, China (solo) Ma Liuming Performance Chosen Images, Aura Gallery, Shanghai, China (solo) Modern Art of China- Sigg Collection, Berne, Switzerland (group) The Wall, Beijing, USA (group) Mayfly, Beijing Commune, Beijing, China (group) Gallery Albert, Paris, France Beijing Art Now Gallery, Beijing, China 2004 "No Body's Fool No Body's Hurt" Aura Gallery, Shanghai, China "If You are Collector" Aura Gallery Shanghai, China "Illusion" Aura Gallery Shanghai, China "Me Me Me! – Part I"Ccourtyard Gallery, Beijing, China "Face to Face" Aura Gallery, Shanghai, China China, The body Everywhere, Museum of Contemporary Art, Marseille, France (group) Forbidden Senses ? Espace Culturel François Mitterrand de Périgueux, Ancien Eveche de Sarlat, France (group) Examining My Own Practice, London, UK (group) Camera / Action : Performance and Photography, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, USA (group) Fen-Ma Liuming, Top Space, Tai Kang Life Building, Beijing, China (solo) Me, Me, Me: Courtyard Gallery, Beijing, China Top Space, Tai Kang Life Building, Beijing, China (solo) "Ten Years Review of Ma Liuming's Works", Top Space, Tai Kang Life Building, Beijing, ChinaChina 2003 Ma Liuming, Soobin Art Gallery, Singapore "Any Day", performance at Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan Ma Liuming, Chinese Contemporary Gallery, London, UK (solo) "China Art Now-out of the Red" Marella Arte Contemporanea, Milano, Italy (photographs and video of performances) Traveling exhibition: Trevi Flash Art Museum "Summer 03" Chinese Contemporary Art Gallery, London Corps de Chine, Gallery Anne Lettree, Paris Femmes de Chine, Gallery Veronique Maxe, Paris Entre de Chine _ Chine et mutations, |uvres vidéo d'artistes contemporains chinois . au Palais de l'Ile – Annecy, magespassages, France The Reencounters d'Arles Festival, Arles, France The Strange Heaven-Contemporary Chinese photography, Gallery Rudolfinum, Prague Peripheries Become the Center, Prague Biennale 1 2003 Bare Androgyny, Beijing, China 2002 International Exhibitionist, Curzon Soho Cinema, London, England Reinterpretation: A Decade of Experimental Chinese Art 1990–2000 The First Guangzhou Triennial, Guangzhou, China Ma Liuming Zeit-Foto Salon, Japan (solo) Translated Acts Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil (Carrillo Gil Museum), Mexico City The 2nd Pingyao International Photography Festival: Chinese's New Photography, China When It Rains It Pours, DDM, Shanghai, China Art Moscow, Moscow, Russia Paris-Pekin, Paris, France New Photography from China, CourtYard Gallery, Beijing, China New Expression of Korean and Chinese Painting 2002 Seoul Arts Center, Seoul, Korea Chinese Modernity, Fondation Armando Alvares Penteada, São Paulo, Brazil Ma Liuming, Soobin Art Gallery, Singapore (solo) New photography from China, CourtYard Gallery, Beijing "Photographs and Videos of Performances", Soobin Art Gallery, Singapore 2001 Queens Museum of Art, New York, USA Art Moscow, Moscow, Russia New Expression of Korean and Chinese Painting 2002, Seoul Arts Center, Seoul, Korea Chinese Modernity, Foundation Armando Alvares Penteada, São Paulo, Brazil Performance at Les Subsistancestm, Part of festival Polysonneries, Lyon, France Performance at Dilston Grove Church, Part of Span 2 International Performance Art, London