College Girl Covers Chinese Artist’s Naked Body with Hickeys
by Wayne Chen on Monday, January 7, 2013
From Fetion:
Hickeys all over naked guy: Hardcore! Female college students leave hundreds of hickeys on naked guy
He is almost completely naked, with some tree roots tied to his hair hanging down to his ankles, both hands bound to a wooden pile stretched open, standing in a cross, with roasted chickens hanging off both ends of the wooden pole and his private parts; She silently leaves hundreds of hickeys on his chest, abdomen, and arms. He says this is performance art, to criticize today’s attitudes towards love that seek only pleasure without taking responsibility.
[Above] At around 12 noon on 2012 December 22, in a Xiaozhou Village auditorium in Haizhu district of Guangzhou, performance artist Kang Yi staged this performance art of receiving hickeys all over his nearly nude body. After about one and half hours, the girl picked up three basins of water that were in front of the stage, and splashed them on Kang Yi’s body, his shivering with cold ending this piece of performance art early when it was originally planned to continue for two and a half hours.
The girl leaving the hickeys is Miss Liu, a second-year art student at a certain Hunan province art college, who was invited to perform this piece of performance art with Kang Yi. She says the hickeys were “sucked out one by one”, that originally she was to leave 1000 hickeys, but because the weather was too cold, they had to end it early. As an art student, she strongly supports the idea that Kang Yi wants to express, believing that people should “pursue pure love”.
Kang Yi claims the tree roots on his hair represent the elapse of time, the baked chicken symbolizing women, while the act of leaving hickeys is an expression of sexual/carnal desire, the entire process conveying “a criticism of the messy and twisted values toward love”. The reason for choosing to end with being splashed with water is because the weather is rather cold, “there is inevitably some reaction to contact from a female’s body”, so splashing water represents “having to make a decision between ice and fire, between desire and abstinence”. Through this piece of work, he calls for today’s young men and women to seek the true love of Chinese tradition.
This piece of performance art drew a crowd of onlookers. Most of them said they “don’t know what he’s trying to say”. After being told what the intention of the artist is, Miss Jin thinks this is just “what one tells oneself” [one's own interpretation or rationalization], also suggesting that “art meant for the public ought to be easily understood by everyone before it can be popular and spread its message”.
