Ma Liuming  (Chinese, 1969) 

Ma Liuming (Chinese, b.1969) is a performance artist and painter best known for avant-garde performances as his alter ego, Fen-Ma Liuming, which he assumed in 1993. Fen-Ma Liuming is an androgynous figure who emphasizes the contrast between a woman’s dress and a man’s body. Born in Huangshi, Hubei Province, Ma studied oil painting at the Hubei Academy of Fine Arts, and moved to the East Village artist colony on the outskirts of Beijing. As a student, he staged performances of wrapping his body in plastic wrap to express the feeling of restriction. His nude performances during the 1990s were scandalous, and in 1994 he was arrested and held in prison for two months. After he was released, Fen-Ma Liuming appeared in another nude performance, Frying Fish, during which he fried a live fish until it charred. For his performance Fish Child(1996), Fen-Ma Liuming hung a live fish from cords in a bathroom and took a shower. In 1998, Fen-Ma Liuming walked along the Great Wall naked, a controversial event that raised issues of tradition, cultural taboos, and political boundariess. Like all of his performances, Great Wall was documented by the East Village photographers. Many of Ma’s paintings depict Fen-Ma Liuming as an infant against a colorful background, while his most recent series of paintings abandons his alter-ego for contorted human figures against black backgrounds. Ma’s work has been exhibited at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in Fukuoka, Japan, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York, and the National Art Center in Tokyo, Japan. He currently lives and works in Beijing.