关于黄永砯的《佛手》与《捐赠名单》
关于黄永砯的《佛手》与《捐赠名单》塞西蕾布赫纳
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黄永砯出生于中国东南部福建省的厦门半岛，文化大革命之后考入浙江美术学院（今中国美术学院）进修。在那段时间，他很快跳出了学院教育的局限，追随法国装置艺术家、哲学家维特根斯坦（Wittgenstein）以及杜尚（Marcel Duchamps）、卡日（John Cage）和贝依（Joseph Beuys）这些开创了真正艺术破立之路的艺术家们的足迹。在他发表的一些文章中，黄永砯开始表露出希望将西方后现代思想同中国道家虚无之说糅合的愿望。1982年黄永砯回到故乡，迅速成长为中国先锋艺术运动中最激进的成员之一。向社会现实主义和学院主义频频发出挑战，他创作了一系列随机排列的装置。受《易经》启发，他在作品里加入各种材料。当无法把握创作的效果时，他便将自己的画作付之一炬，并号召“厦门达达”的艺术家们效仿他的举动（1987年）。当时，中国正深陷于劳动改造、计划经济、大跃进等带来的不公正中，而这种非理性也主导着黄永砯的创作，激发着他的艺术激情。这种完全随意的方式形成了他的创作理念：将一本西方现代艺术史和一本中国古典艺术史一起放进洗衣机里搅拌滚动两分钟，目的是提取出两种文化之一。将文化理念漂洗，寻找出文化价值中的片面性，这成了黄永砯之后许多年的创作动力1。1989年，受马丁（Jean-Hubert Martin）之邀，黄永砯赴法参加“大地魔术师”2展览。时值 “八九”事件爆发，他便决定不再返回中国。就此，黄永砯开始从中国悠久文化中汲取灵感，革新创作，踏上了捍卫“另一种声音”长久以来被西方思想排挤湮没的东方意识这一抗争之路。
《佛手》
黄永砯经常将两千多年前的东西方占卜预言术按不同思路相联系，质疑大众生活及知识界的唯西方论的合理性。正如文艺评论家费大为3所言，“黄永砯选择了一种矛盾的态度，在制造文化冲击的同时又超越了不同文化间的对立。在我们所处的文化困境中研究相异性，这就是他一直以来的创作动力。”
在这次《佛手》作品创作过程中，黄永砯将自己世界公民的身份投射入作品当中，围绕着移民融入、文化认同及社会多样性等基本问题，展现出一种在多文化背景下生活和工作的生存实态。这些作品所蕴涵的历史探究及精神思索，无不与事件当时所处的环境相关联。黄永砯因地制宜地采用了很多当代艺术创作并不惯用的材质：熟米4，药物5，还有动物昆虫以及它们的尸体：蛇、乌龟、蝎子、蜥蜴等。6使用动物进行创作的灵感来自于艺术家对中国古籍的认识：古老的中国哲理常常借暗喻表达。
“在中国，人类同自然的关系更加紧密，肮脏和贫苦使万物间的差异缩小了。引起憎恶恐惧的事物同时也吸引着我们。事物间的区分并不像在西方那么严格。这其中的关键就是随机性，是不受人类意愿控制的。我们的生活逃不开社会因素的影响：当我们参观动物园里的动物时，它们是被分隔开一个个保护的。而在文化与文化间并没有这种情况，想把不同文化分隔开保护是不可能的。它们都在用自己的声音唱歌，所以会有走音现象，和谐便会被打破。”7
当黄永砯将活的动物、昆虫加入到作品中，用来暗指不同文化时，他经常会遇到审查的干扰。社会制度对此类艺术仍有限制，因而当艺术家在巴黎国立非洲大洋洲博物馆Cinq Continents画廊里布置作品，把活体动物和中国古董放置在一起时9，关于如何为动物供食方面的要求非常严格。
这个名为《佛手》的展览将20余年来黄永砯探索不同层面上文化思想交汇的成果展现在我们眼前。佛手是一种有延年益寿之功的神奇药用植物。它露出地面的巨大外型仿佛一只握着念珠的大佛之手。佛手这个符号以一种夸张地手法暗示了宗教施加于人类的影响。展厅中悬挂的另一只佛手伸展出犹如章鱼般的多重触手，传递着出奇静谧而又危险的气氛。这只悬空之手带动起了整个空间，在表达文化含义之外，它颀长的形态使人在无意中被深深吸引的同时心存畏惧。
黄永砯借这些形象所表达的涵义不止于符号原有的意义，就好像在我们解读作品的过程中，他仅仅陪同半程，而留下充分自由，让我们用自己的步调和评判标准去理解。黄永砯对东西方历史的分析十分透彻。根据维特根斯坦原则，艺术家把我们的思维引入到一个完全无法预见，始终变化的过程，而一直让我们去探寻其造型艺术中所用文化思想素材的本质
黄永砯能够适应源于不同艺术渊源的不同欣赏思维，他用木材创作了《快乐花园》中的一个著名场景。《快乐花园》是圣奥蒂勒山欧亨堡修道院（1167—1195）主持编纂的作品，包括文本和336幅描绘科学及宗教力量的图画。黄永砯选中了其中最著名的一幅“巨鱼”（Léviathan），命名为《钓鱼》。
巨鱼的象征意义在历史学和心理学中占据了非常重要的地位。可能正是因为这点，艺术家将这幅画的尺寸放大，完成了一件宏伟的作品，其制作手法已经接近了传统宗教雕塑。一群制佛像工匠参与其中，关于这点艺术家笑称：“佛像肯定比受难基督像做得更好。”巨鱼在腓尼基神话中是一种怪兽。民间流传着对巨鱼的恐惧，传说它会被反秩序的诅咒唤醒。只要不被刺激，它就一直在海里昏睡。这只《约伯记》里的海中巨怪其实早在巴比伦人的世界起源说中就有提及。大海象征着无意识，是黑暗怪物和欲望力量的汇集处，而巨鱼能够吞下象征神圣的太阳。在政治哲学论著中，巨鱼代表了由绝对权力主宰一切生灵命运的国家，是上帝和绝对公正的对立面。专横、残酷、极权的暴政驱使这只没有约束、毫无怜悯的怪兽，操纵着人们的肉体及意识。这种国家专制主义学说来自于唯物派哲学家霍布斯（Thomas Hobbes），宣扬以自由为代价，被动服从权力，保护个人和集体的利益。
这个展品的精彩在于它对权力的表述：一群招财佛被放到了使徒的位置上，而基督则成了鱼钩。黄永砯说：“佛教中的权力不在佛身上。”他希望表现出“权力的假相和表象的虚幻”。而到最后，一切都被揭示出来，幻象在展览结束之时破灭。
在展厅的橱窗中悬挂了许多羊蹄和羊尾，而画廊柜台上，两只新近砍下的羊蹄把一张画卷水平固定着。这里有个小插曲：黄永砯和他的妻子在工作室中向人们提供机会宰杀活羊。剩下的羊被艺术家保护了起来。他希望“这些材料在展厅中观众们的目光下慢慢风干”。黄永砯个人经纪维尔涅（Philippe Vergne）在黄永砯上一次专题展览的宣传册中讲道：“黄的策略是，尽可能地选择至少两种相隔很远的文化。他创造出一种模式，让互相对立但是又不能孤立的两个个体共存。”11作品“羊和鹿”复原了各种鹿的骨骼，用红色墨水12在画卷上做出引模，让我们自己发挥想象，就像艺术家自己所说：切下的羊蹄也许会在宣纸画卷上留下脚印。
《捐赠名单》
在今天，藏传佛教保留了传统佛教最古老的一面，这个教派同动物界的关系最紧密，展览中再现了许多此类元素：钟，蛇，象皮，宗教仪器，还有口衔沾血佛手的猛禽。蝙蝠，在东方是幸福的象征，它和佛手一样伴随“寿”字13出现。它的头部很大，大脑的重量使它不得不将头向下低。这种动物也带着黑暗意味：残忍、阴险、古怪，还被证实具有激发性欲的力量，黄永砯因此将它们视作人类的近亲。
他根据这种隐秘的动物创作了多件作品。他在一件未完成的作品中再次借用蝙蝠的特点，取其外形，影射了一起发生在中美法这三个代表艺术家身份的国家间的外交事件14。
蝙蝠引出了这副卷轴的内容。这件陈列在展厅中的神秘作品上画满了各种符号，犹如佛教徒膜拜的宝塔，也象征着佛教中的崇拜仪式。塔身由宣纸做成，可以让我们一览塔内曼陀罗型的中轴，脊柱状的结构亦虚亦实，象征着人类与世界的关系。
垂立长卷作品《捐赠名单》将观众引入展厅，开始参观的旅程，就像开启了一趟传奇冒险，我们并不清楚究竟是蝙蝠吃下了佛手，还是奉献出了自己……
本文许多资料来自同艺术家本人的深入讨论，同时还有其妻-沈远，侯瀚如，费大为，Yu Hsiao-Hwei和Evelyne Jouanno。Evelyne Jouanno写于1998年的硕士论文以黄永砯为题，我从中选用了很多内容。
（本文写于2006年11月，巴黎，圣-图安）
1．Evelyne Jouanno在其论文中写到：“漂洗文化提出了反对西方文化霸权主义。1990年，在卡地亚基金会赞助下，黄永砯用从报纸书籍提取出的纸浆为一棵连跟拔起的大树包扎伤口。1991年他还把卡内基艺术博物馆图书馆一个分馆的书籍漂洗掉，把Beuys, Kounellis, Cucchi和Kiefer等人的翻译著作捣成纸糊，在法兰克福Fenster画廊策划“建筑大教堂”，这些举动向艺术界超级明星们的政治影响力提出质疑。1992年他在巴黎把Forney图书馆的藏书还原为纸浆。他想要强调的是推进艺术界多元化的策略。”
2．我在这次布展现场遇见了黄永砯。
3．费大为，《羊的危害》展览媒体公告，卡地亚基金会，1997年巴黎。
4．作品“Indigestible Object”, 意大利Prato, Museo d’Arte Contemporaneo, 1992年。
5．作品“Pharmacie”，巴黎Froment & Putman画廊，1995年。
6．1993年，黄永砯在系列作品《de Coalition》中《Passage》中，开始加入活体动物。作品由Glasgow现代艺术中心策划。
7．《黄永砯》展览画册第18页，巴黎国立非洲、大洋洲博物馆Cinq Continents画廊，1995年9月21日至1996年1月15日。
8．《黄祸》，1993年牛津博物馆；《世界歌剧院》，1994年蓬皮杜中心。其他作品不一一列举。
9．10．11． 《House of Oracles：黄永砯回顾展》，Walker艺术中心，明尼阿波利斯、名尼苏达、马萨诸塞州当代美术馆，2005年7月，Philippe Vergne，Doryun Chong，费大为、侯瀚如、黄永砯联合编辑，Yu Hsiao Hwei翻译。
12．由黏土和颜料混合而成，专用于中国印章。
13．在我们（法国）农村，蝙蝠被钉死在谷仓门梁上。而在世界有些地区则尊敬蝙蝠。它们出现在中美洲许多文明和宗教中，例如玛雅人就非常崇拜蝙蝠。中国明朝时期，蝙蝠成为了幸运和长寿的象征。Pi hen fu是现在最常用的称呼，意为“代表幸福的温和飞虫”。
14．见《蝙蝠计划I,II》展览画册，Fondation出版社，Guy & Myriam Ullens, 2003年。《蝙蝠计划》2001年12月在深圳首展，《蝙蝠计划II》于2002年广州双年展上展出，作品意图回击美国间谍飞机EP-3在2001年侵犯中国领空的举动。如历史学家Martina Köppel-Yang在画册中提到，引起黄永砯注意的是“美国方面就在中国人好奇的目光注视下拆卸了飞机。这个讽刺的场景吸引了艺术家，他按原本尺寸复制了蝙蝠型飞机。黄永砯暂时放弃了计划，希望5年后在他参加威尼斯双年展时再展出这个作品。2003年黄永砯在Z.O.U, Zone of Urgency展上受到侯瀚如邀请，参加威尼斯双年展。
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The Buddha’s hands and the List of Offerings
The Buddha’s hands and the List of OfferingsBy Cécile Bourne
Huang Yong Ping was born on the peninsula of the city of Xiamen, in Fujian province, in the south-east of China. After the Cultural revolution, this artist was admitted to the Zhejiang academy of Fine arts where he went beyond the framework of the teaching very quickly. He became acquainted with French structuralist thought as well as with the philosopher Wittgenstein’s ideas and with artists which created true ruptures in art, namely Marcel Duchamps, John Cage, Joseph Beuys. He published texts that already announced his desire to put in relation Western Postmoderne thought with this of the void and the fullness of Daoism.Back to his hometown in 1982, he thus quickly became one of the most radical and militant artist of the avant-gardist movement in China. He did many actions against socialist realism and academicism: he created mechanisms by which the work is ordered by chance. From the yi-king (Book of the Transformations, a classic of Chinese divination), he realized works using all sorts of objects. He burnt all his paintings without neither being able to decide nor to control the result of his work. He asked the artists of the Xiamen Dada group — of which he was the leader — to do the same (1987). In the country where he grew up, both leaden by the injustice of the goulag and by great tides of social and economical plannings, the dynamics proposed by the artist is in part based on the irrationality that dictates its artistic solutions.
The Buddha’s Hands
Thus, the drawing of his big roulette gave him a solution: to put a history book of the modern western art and a history book of the traditional Chinese art in a washing machine for two minutes. Then draw one of these two cultures from it.
Washing the notion of culture, all the while indicating the relativity of the cultural value had thus become Huang Yong Ping’s main motivation for several years(1). He arrived in France in 1989, invited by Jean- Hubert Martin for the exhibition Wizards of the Earth(2) . That event took place at the same time as happened the events in Tiananmen Square. He thus decided not to go back to China anymore. Then he went on resisting by renewing his strategies, by drawing in Chinese culture in order to fight for the voice of the Other. This one was often either marginalized or transcended by the cultural mono speeches dominated by the West.
Huang Yong Ping more often than not associates either more than thousand years old Chinese divination systems or Western ones according to strategies which put into question the legitimacy of the eurocentric role of the intellectual and daily life. As the art critic Fei Dawei(3)expresses it, the artist chooses "a double-edged attitude intended to cause cultural shocks and to overcome at the same time the oppositions between the cultures, with this constant motivation to seek the otherness beyond the dead end of the cultural dilemma in which we live".
Through his protean work, the artist projects the reality of his existence of citizen of the world who lives and works in several cultures simultaneously around fundamental issues relating to immigration, the identity and hybridity. These issues are raised through the works realised for this exhibition entitled the Buddha ‘s Hands. The historical and spiritual set of problems that the works of the artist imply are always related to the contexts in which they are shown. According to the places where he is brought to work, Huang Yong Ping uses most of the time materials unusual in the contemporary artistic practice such as cooked rice(4), medicines(5), or dead and alive animals and insects: snakes, turtles, scorpions, lizards etc …(6) The use of animals by the artist is justified by his knowledge of the Chinese old books in which philosophy works by metaphor: "In China, there is a more intense relationship with nature, dirtiness and poverty bringing closer all kinds of things. If there are dislike and fear of these two, there is also attraction.
Division between things is less strict there than in the West. All the interest lies in the chance, in what is written out of the will of the human beings. Our life cannot escape social elements: when one looks at animals in a zoo, they are isolated, protected from one another. There is not this need between the various cultures, since it is today impossible that these one remain isolated and protected the ones from the others. Each one sings with his own voice and could create dissensions or break the harmony." (7)
Huang Yong Ping was often confronted with the problem of censorship(8) : on several occasions when the artist introduced alive animals and insects into his work as a metaphor of the various cultural ethnic groups. This report shows the limits of the institution, so that when the plan works, as in the galerie des Cinq Continents in the Musée d’Art Africain et d’Océaniens where true animals were put on the same level as Chinese antiquities(9) , the implacable logic of the food chain thus comes out more reinforced.
This exhibition entitled The Buddha’s Hands puts us in the presence of multiples levels of both cultural and spiritual crossroads on which Huang Yong Ping has been working for about twenty years. The Buddha’s Hand is a medicinal plant used for its therapeutic virtues of longevity. Put on the ground, its gigantic form reminds of the Buddha’s hand keeping an exaggeratedly oversized rosary. The monumentality of the piece amplifies the metaphor of the power of religion on the man in a caricatured manner. Here reigns an apparent peace (or danger) which will be found again in the other hand with its many fingers suspended in the gallery’s space, like the articulated tentacles of an octopus in full action. This suspended hand has a strong choreographic presence in the space, while its willowy forms associate to our unconscious the shared feelings of fascination and fear beyond any cultural reference.
Huang Yong Ping transforms the symbols beyond their significations, as if half accompanying us in our understanding, while leaving us entirely free so that we appropriate his work according to our own rhythm and criteria for comprehension. The artist maintains a very great ability of both analysing Eastern and Western history. It is thus by the knowledge of Wittgenstein’s principles that the artist determines our reading in an always unforeseeable and moving sphere of activities in which any negotiation is always possible by means of the very nature of cultural and spiritual data which he borrows in his plastic language.
In this capacity to adapt to the infinite possibilities of interpretation given by the different art histories , Huang Yong Ping chose to make a very well-known picture of the Garden of Delights of l’Besse? of the Mount St Odile, Herad of Hohenburg (1167-1195) in wood and in a monumental manner. This picture both contains texts and 336 representations of the power of both sciences and theology. Huang Yong Ping chose one of the most famous among them , this of the Léviathan, that he entitled The Fishing. The symbolic picture of the Léviathan taken in the agrarian myths took an infinitely bigger dimension in history and psychology.
This is maybe the reason why the artist oversized the proportions of this drawing till realizing a monumental work which technique is almost similar to this of the traditional religious sculpture. It was realized by craftsmen that make Buddhas, explains the artist with a certain pleasure. He also says "that the Christ on the cross is certainly less well realized than the Buddhas". The Léviathan is a monster in the Phoenician mythology. The popular imagination could always fear that it would wake up, attracted by an effective malediction against the existing order. It is still in the sea, where it rests somnolent if one does not annoy it. This sea monster of the origins, mentioned in Job, was already mentioned in the Babylonian cosmogonies. If one admits that the sea is also the symbol of the unconscious, receptacle of obscure monsters and instinctive forces, this monster is able to swallow up the sun that itself symbolizes God. In the treaties of political philosophy, the Léviathan symbolizes the state that appropriates itself an absolute sovereignty, rival of God’s one, as well as an absolute right of life and death on all creatures. Similarly to an uncontrolled and pitiless Monster the state acts according to an arbitrary tyranny that is to say in a both cruel and totalitarian manner to dominate the bodies and the consciences. This absolutist conception of the political state derives from Thomas Hobbes, as a logical consequence, of a materialist philosophy, that claims to protect individuals and groups but at the cost of all freedom and a passive obedience to power.
The chief attraction of this exhibition therefore rightly lies in the representation of the power in which makeshift Buddhas are represented here in place of the Apostles, Christ has become the hook. If as the artist says ‘’ the power in Buddhism does not exist in itself’’, what he wished to show is the idea of the illusion of power and the vanity of representation.
Nothing is hidden in the end: the vanity is revealed at the end of the exhibition. Sheep’s paws and tails are suspended in the window of the gallery whereas the shop counter shows a roll kept opened horizontally by two freshly cut paws. For the anecdote, the artist and his wife gave the opportunity to people to kill the sheep for the Aid feast in their workshop. The own remains of this sacrifice have thus been kept by the artist who wished that ‘’ these elements be left to dry in the gallery by the look of the visitors from the exterior and the interior". The artist discloses some elements of his personal biography. As Philippe Vergne emphasizes in the catalogue of the last monographic exhibition of the artist : this is because Huang Yong Ping’s strategy consists in systematically choosing at least two cultural universes as far apart from one another as possible.
He thus develops a method that consists in making coexisting these two conflicting entities but that at the same time cannot exist without each other’’(10). Sheep or Deers thus recreates different drawn skeletons of these cervid, which tracks are revealed by red ink(11) applied on the roll so as to give free rein to our imagination and enable us to imagine as the artist says that << the cut paws may have unexpectedly come to walk on the rice paper roll.
The List of Offerings
If Tibetan buddhism keeps the oldest aspects of traditional buddhism these days, this worship is more linked with the animal world, by means of reproduced elements here such as the bell, the snake, the elephant skin, a ritual object, and predatory birds that hold the bloodied Buddha’s hands in their beak. The bat is the symbol of happiness in the Far East, its presence, like the Buddha’s hand, also accompanies the character for longevity(12) . Its head being overdeveloped, the weight of its brain forces it to perch itself the head upside down.
This bird embodies obscure aspects: cruelty, slyness, oddness. It also has already identified erotic and libidinous powers that the artist therefore considers as close to these of the human being. Huang Yong Ping worked on several projects around the bat, this furtive animal. He thus reused the characteristics of this animal according to a genuine work in progress which destiny took as much the taxidermic form as that of drawing and diplomatic intrigues between the three countries that structure the artist’s identity: China, France and the United States(13) .
The bat introduces the content of the roll on the branch in offering to the visitor. This mysterious work displayed in the space is filled with drawn clues that refer as much to the tower pagoda revered by Buddhist believers as to the rituals associated with this worship. The deciphering of the drawn tower pagoda reveals the axis thanks to the transparency of the rice paper: a mandala-shaped construction, similar to a vertebral column, made of void and fullness which refers to our own link with the world.
This vertical roll The list of offerings introduces and greets the spectator in his journey in the gallery’s space , like the unfolded of a legend of which one will never know if that was the bat that ate the Buddha’s Hands or if they offered themselves or were sacrificed…
Saint-Ouen, nov. 2006
Many elements of this text come from the fruitful discussions with the artist, his wife, Shen Yuan, Hou Hanru, Fei Dawei, Yu Hsiao-Hwei and Evelyne Jouanno who wrote her MA thesis about the artist in september 1998 and from which I took many elements.
(1) The art critic Evelyne Jouanno emphasizes in her MA thesis that : « washing (or dirtying) culture will precisely enable to counter the cultural and hegemonical discourses and their powers in the West . He bandaged with pulp the wounds of an uprooted tree coming from books and newspapers at the Fondation Cartier in 1990. Huang Yong Ping would also wash all the books of one section of the Library of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburg in 1991 and reduce to vomit twenty or so translations of the famous book by Beuys, Kounellis, Cucchi and Kiefer, Let’s Build a Cathedrale at the Fenster Gallery in Frankfurt, thus putting into question here the political power played by the super stars of the world of art. He also reduced to pulp a stock of art books from the bibliothèque Forney in 1992. The matter here was to reinforce his strategy of alternative to the discourses of art . »
(2) I met Huang Yong Ping during the setting up of this exhibition.
(3) Fei Dawei, Press release of the exhibition Péril de Mouton, Fondation Cartier, Paris, 1997.
(4) Indigestible Object, Museo d’Arte Contemporaneo, Prato, Italy, 1992
(5) Pharmacie, Galerie Froment & Putman, Paris, 1995
(6) Huang Yong Ping first brought in alive animals in his work in 1993, especially in his work entitled Passage within the framework of Coalition, organised at the Center for Contemporary Art, Glasgow.
(7) Catalogue of the exhibition Huang Yong Ping at la Galerie des Cinq Continents, Musée National des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie, Paris, 21 sept. 1995 to 15 jan. 1996, p.18
(8) Yellow Peril at the Oxford Museum in 1993 and Le Théâtre du Monde at the Georges Pompidou Center in 1994, just to mention a few examples.
(9) House of Oracles : a Huang Yong Ping Rétrospective, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota et Mass Moca, North Adams, Massachusetts, 2005-07, edited by Philippe Vergne and Doryun Chong, with the contributions of Fei Dawei, Hou Hanru and Huang Yong Ping, the texts were translated by Yu Hsiao Hwei.
(10) House of Oracles : a Huang Yong Ping Rétrospective, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota et Mass Moca, North Adams, Massachusetts, 2005-07, edited by Philippe Vergne and Doryun Chong, with the contributions of Fei Dawei, Hou Hanru and Huang Yong Ping, the texts were translated by Yu Hsiao Hwei.
(11) It is a blend a clay and pigment, used especially for the Chinese seal.
(12) Bats were nailed on the doors of the barns in our countrysides. However they were glorified in other regions of the world. They were present in the religion of many civilisations in Central America and certain people venerated them such as the Mayas. The bat became a symbol of good luck and longetivity in China under the Ming dynasty (1360-1644 av. J.C.). Pi hen fu is nowadays the word the most in use to refer to it and it means « flat insect of the happiness ».
(13) See catalogue Bat Project 1 & II, edited by the Fondation Guy & Myriam Ullens, 2003. The Bat Project started in Shenzhen in dec 2001 ; together with the Bat Project II (Guangzhou Biennale in 2002), they are both attempts at replicating the american spy plane EP-3. This latter collided in the Chinese airspace in 2001. What caught the artist’s attention as the art historian Martina Köppel-Yang underlines in the catalogue of the exhibition is that, « the American services dismantled that plane under the amused eye of the Chinese. This ironical situation caught the artist’s attention. He thus created a scale one Batplane. The artist thus perfectly reused that project for almost five years and especially on the occasion of his participation at the Venice Biennale where he was invited by the curator Hou Hanru to take part to the exhibition Z.O.U, Zone of Urgency » in 2003.
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