Chinese artist He Yunchang believes in suffering for his art. His performance pieces have included:
- Having one of his ribs removed so that he could wear it as a necklace.
- Having a doctor cut a one meter gash down the side of his body, without anesthesia.
- Encasing himself in a cube of quick-setting concrete for 24 hours.
- Trying to “cut a river in half” by suspending himself above it from a crane while holding a knife in the water, as blood dripped from cuts in his arms.
- Painting the fingernails and toenails of 10 mannequins with his own blood.
- Staring at 10,000 watt bulbs to damage his eyesight
- Burning his clothes while wearing them.
Art critic Judith Neilson explains:
“He Yunchang is an alchemist of pain… He Yunchang evidently believes that pain and extreme discomfort, deliberately planned and willingly undergone, have a transcendent quality — and that it is this quality that raises mere action to the level of art. [His performances] serve as silent rebukes to contemporary Chinese society, where people undergo all kinds of suffering for money precisely because they see money as the ultimate protection against suffering.“