Ma Liuming

In that now crowded planet called Chinese art Ma Liuming is indubitably one of the leading personalities and this monograph - the first one dedicated to him - documents his activities along an itinerary that began in the early 90's. Naked, with long hair and his face gaudily made-up, the artist soon found his artistic cipher in a male body with a feminine face, a peculiarity that gave rise to "Fen-Ma Liuming", the hermaphrodite character that he has constantly "played" throughout his career.
Setting out from a powerful "male-female" dualism - which Ma Liuming has evidently drawn from the androgynous Buddhist statues, from the onnagata and above all from the principle of Yin and Yang - this book edited by Eleonora Battiston traces the not always easy years from his first performances in the East Village of a politically agitated Beijing to the most recent paintings and sculptures in which the artist deconstructs and reinterprets his own image with an almost obsessive seriality.