MY AMERICA. 2000.

NYC: Deitch, n.d. (2000)
21 x 15cm, 20pp (folded glued in sheets – which alternatively open out to ten 30 x 42cm full colour posters which can be viewed without breaking the binding). The first edition of this documentation of Zhang’s immigrant performance where he and 56 naked American citizens stood in front of an audience and carried out various spiritual and physical events including a period of aggressive pelting of Zhang with solid loafs of bread and rolls. The fold-out sheets display small posters of the action which if desired can be peeled away from the glue binding for display. Zhang’s practice before he came to the USA involved often long periods of meditation under extreme conditions including masochistic actions such as melting ice by only his own body heat as well as sitting in a fly-infested public toilet in China covered in honey without moving for hours. One is forced to admire the artist’s pluck and while his work is interesting it is also a reminder that the emerging Chinese art world is often several years behind the performance and artistic experiments of the west (we would suggest by around 30 years) albeit there is a freshness about Zhang’s dogmatic suffering and this book is well presented. Fine and scarce.