“My face followed the daylight till it slowly darkened. I cannot tell who I am. My identity has disappeared.” - Zhang Huan

As one of the most celebrated artists in China, Zhang Huan has been exploring national identity and personal identity throughout his career, perhaps most notably through his performances. “I often find myself in conflict among the environment I live in,” he has stated, “and feel surrounded by an intolerable self-existence. Therefore, when these problems occur within my body, I find that my body is the only direct approach that allows me to feel the world, and also let the world know me.” The ephemeral nature of performance art subsequently lent way to the incorporation of photography into the artist’s work, allowing him to document the varying stages of his performance. Indeed, once the performance ended, the photographs, being the sole remnant of the performance, became surrogates for the performance itself.

In Zhang Huan’s Family Tree viewers find a deeply intimate and cultural exploration of heritage and selfhood that is in keeping with the artist’s penchant for performance. The grid documents the progression of three calligraphers whom the artist had invited to write text on his face over the course of a single day. The sources inscribed on Zhang’s face include popular Chinese folklore, family names and poems. As such, the artist transformed the human face from a marker of individuality to a vessel of collective history. Some of the text on Zhang’s face relates to studies of human physiognomy, whereby individual facial features alluded to personality attributes. Yet, the irony in Zhang’s work is that the layering of informative text on his face subsequently hides it. Taken two years after the artist had left his native China for New York, Family Tree is a candid exploration of one’s background and the potential complexities that could follow. To understand one’s unique self, Zhang informs the viewers, is to understand the endless confluence of social and cultural forces that had come to create it.

Other examples of this work can be found in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Yale University, New Haven; Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University