"To Raise the Water Level in a Fish Pond - Waterchild" (1997) is a color photograph by celebrated Contemporary Chinese artist Zhang Huan and is a powerful image from one of his most famous performance pieces. This is edition 15 of 15, measuring 40 x 60 inches (76.2 x 101.6 cm) is unframed, in excellent condition. In this piece, Zhang selected migrants and laborers of Beijing's lower society and photographed them in a coordinated symbolic performance whose goal was to raise the pond's water level by one meter. This image is a famous detail from this performance, where virility and life are physically represented in the intertwined man and child whom serenely wade through the water of the pond together.

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Zhang Huan studied at the Art Academy of Henan before graduating in 1991 from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Through photography, sculpture, performance art, painting, and prints, Zhang Huan is known for his pivotal works which often utilize his own body in painful practices to discuss moral, political, and ethical situations in Communist China. Whether wading through a pond, laying naked on a block of ice or covering himself in honey and flies, the artist employs meditation in order to overcome the performance rituals he executes in the name of art. He currently divides his time between New York, Shanghai and Berlin.
Select Public Collections:
Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY)
Guggenheim Museum (New York, NY)
Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY)
Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA)
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, (California, USA)
Philadelphia Museum of Art, (Pennsylvania, USA)
Rubell Family Collection, (Miami, Florida, USA)
Saatchi Collection (London, UK)
Museum of Art Lucerne, (Lucerne, Switzerland)
The Pompidou Center, (Paris, France)
Museum of Contemporary Art, (Leon, Spain)
Center of Contemporary Art, (Malaga, Spain)
National Gallery of Australia (Canberra, AU)
The National Gallery of Australia, (Australia)
The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, (Israel)
Shanghai Art Museum (Shanghai, CN)
Fukuoka Art Museum, (Japan)
The Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, (Tokyo, Japan)
The Watari Museum of Contemporary Art, (Tokyo, Japan)