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Lot 163
Liu Bolin(born 1973)Hiding in the City #91, Great Wall
9 April 2021, 11:00 EDT
New YorkSold for US$10,837.50 inc. premium
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Liu Bolin (born 1973)
Hiding in the City #91, Great Wall, 2010
Archival pigment print, flush-mounted, signed, titled and dated '3/8' in silver ink on the recto.
image/ flush-mount 40 x 59in (101.6 x 147.3cm)
Archival pigment print, flush-mounted, signed, titled and dated '3/8' in silver ink on the recto.
image/ flush-mount 40 x 59in (101.6 x 147.3cm)
Footnotes
Provenance
With Eli Klein Fine Art, New York and Beijing
Chinese performance artist Liu Bolin employs photography as a means to explore the country's national identity while silently protesting its government. In this work and lot 138, both examples from his series Hiding in the City, began as a reaction to the destruction of his Beijing studio by the Chinese government in 2005. Liu began to use the city around him as a backdrop, painting himself to blend in with the surrounding landscape.
These images require meticulous planning and execution: dressed in a Chinese military uniform, Liu steps into his chosen frame and, with the help of an assistant, is painted seamlessly into the scene, a process that can sometimes take up to 10 hours. The resulting photograph, depicting the tension between Liu's body and the surrounding environment, directly allude to China's current massive social, cultural and physical change at the expense of what Liu considers intellectual and artistic freedom.