The Great Body Has No Shape, the Great Art Is Embodied. Conception of Body in Zhang Huan’s Performance Art

Zhang Huan (b. 1965) can be considered a pioneering contemporary performance artist in China. His position on the Chinese art scene is highly regarded not only from a historical perspective. The use of the artist’s body as a means of expression can serve multiple purposes, which can touch upon, e.g. social or political issues, and seldom reflects the role of the human body as a vehicle for mediation. Through his artistic activity, the artist tries to discuss this issue based on the Chinese philosophical intuitions of this aspect of human existence. In our paper, we shall try to examine the theoretical foundations of the artist’s approaches to performance and illustrate them with selected works.