Chinese Landscape No. 5,

1999

<p> In the series <em>Chinese Landscape</em>, Huang physically embodies the long and rich history of landscape painting in China by using his body as canvas. His specific reference is the blue-and-green landscapes of the Tang dynasty (618–907), which have associations with the imagined realms of immortals. Huang’s wife, Zhang Tiemei (b. 1968), a classically trained artist, covers his torso and arms with a white ground, then paints vivid scenes of mountains, trees, water, architecture, and figures. For Huang, the act and performance of body painting and of mapping landscape onto his body serve to reincarnate the landscape painting tradition. By cropping his head out of the frame, Huang also subsumes his own identity, imprinting his anonymous body with a shared Chinese cultural heritage. </p>