Ma Liuming

In that now crowded planet called Chinese art Ma Liuming is indubitably one of the leading personalities and this monograph – the first one dedicated to him – documents his activities along an itinerary that began in the early 90’s. Naked, with long hair and his face gaudily made-up, the artist soon found his artistic cipher in a male body with a feminine face, a peculiarity that gave rise to “Fen-Ma Liuming”, the hermaphrodite character that he has constantly “played” throughout his career. Setting out from a powerful “male-female” dualism – which Ma Liuming has evidently drawn from the androgynous Buddhist statues, from the onnagata and above all from the principle of Yin and Yang – this book edited by Eleonora Battiston traces the not always easy years from his first performances in the East Village of a politically agitated Beijing to the most recent paintings and sculptures in which the artist deconstructs and reinterprets his own image with an almost obsessive seriality.

Ma Liuming was born in 1969 at Huangshi, in the Chinese province of Hubei. He lives and works in Beijing. After one of his first performances, Dialogue with Gilbert & George (1993), he became well known through the ambiguous character he presented at various events and contemporary art centres: Nippon International Performance Art Festival (1996 and 1999); P.S.1. (1998); MOMA of San Francisco (1999) and the Istanbul Biennale (2001).