长江行走－晶体 Changjiangg xingzou—jingti (Yangtze River Walk—Crystals)

Zhiyuan Chen, artist

born 1985

长江行走－晶体 Changjiangg xingzou—jingti (Yangtze River Walk—Crystals), 2007

Where object was made: China

Material/technique: performance; inkjet print; test tube; crystalized urine

Credit line: Museum purchase: R. Charles and Mary Margaret Clevenger Art Acquisition Fund

Accession number: 2012.0168

Not on display

Add to portfolio

If you wish to reproduce this image, please submit an image request

Images

Label texts

Exhibition Label:
"Conversation XIV: Water,” Mar-2013, Kate Meyer and Kris Ercums
Changjiangg Xingzou-Jingti (Yangtze River Walk-Crystals) by the Beijing-based artist Chen Zhiyuan is a contemporary performance work set against the background of the Yangtze River. Chen began his 21-days journey from Shanghai, where the Yangtze River ends its 6,418 kilometres (3,988 mi) voyage, travelling to its glacial origin in the remote province of Qinghai, which borders Tibet. Unlike artistic predecessors who have written poems or made paintings to praise the beauty of landscape along the River, Chen experienced the scenery through his body by drinking water from the Yangtze every day. In so doing, he turned himself
into a medium, transforming the boundless Yangtze through an artistic act.

I started to drink water from the Yangtze River at the place where the river ends and flows into sea. I had kept doing this until I travelled up to Sanjiangyuan in the Yushu County of Qinghai. I collected my urine every day. Then I heated and turned them into salt crystals. Once a day, I put the collected crystals separately into tubes according to the time I made them. Just as site-specific work generates meanings for a site, Chen’s “drinking” performance explores the reality of the Yangtze River in contemporary China.

At the end of his journey, he became ill from drinking the river water.