Cang Xin 苍鑫

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Cang Xin is a renowned Manchurian performance artist based in Beijing. His works are mainly about communication between human and nature, presenting the interaction between Man and the spiritual world.

Date and Place of Birth

Cang was born in Baotou, Inner Mongolia on the 11th of July, 1967.

Childhood and Family

Cang had a difficult childhood. He grew up in a single parent home and was raised by a mother he remembers as disagreeable. At a very young age, he contracted hepatitis and tuberculosis, grew critically ill, and stayed in the hospital for more than 2 years.

Education and Development

In 1989 Cang graduated from the Department of Art at the Tianjin Conservatory of Music. He began self-study of painting in 1991 and moved to the East Village, Beijing in 1993.

Art

Cang creates his own artistic world by borrowing from Shamanism and oriental concepts about the harmonious relationship between Man and his environment. At a time when many champion technology and rationality, his works present a mythology of human-nature interaction, earning him recognition in China and abroad.

Cang Xin, Great Wall, Communication Series, C Print, 100 x 100 cm, 2001.

In 1994, Cang Xin worked with Zhang Huan and other artists to create performance work Add One Meter for an Unknown Mountain. He created Trample the Face the same year.^[1]

In 1994, Cang withdrew himself from the external world. But, after awhile, he yearned for communication and engaged the world with his tongue – licking things from our daily lives. This intimate but alternative method of communication led to the Lick series. From the direct sensation of his tongue, he began to think about the countless interaction in art and the relationship between Shamanism and performance art. Since 2000, he has been studying Shamanism in earnest, traveling to rural villages in Heilongjiang to conduct research on Shaman culture.

Exhibitions

Cang Xin, Identity Exchange, photograph, 85 x 105 cm, 2003-2006.

Cang Xin has participated in many group exhibitions including Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China of 2004 at the Asia Society and the 2002 Sydney Biennale. Cang's most recent solo exhibition was Cang Xin: The Shaman's Face in 2008 at 798 Avant Gallery in 798 Art District.

For Cang's full exhibition history, click here.