Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Chinese Landscape Tattoo No. 2
Huang Yan Chinese
Not on view
In his 1999 photographic series Chinese Landscape Tattoo, Huang covers his torso and arms with traditional landscape scenes, presenting his “reincarnation” of literati-style painting. The composition, modeled in ink and colors on a white ground by Huang’s wife, the artist Zhang Tiemei (b. 1968), follows the natural form of Huang’s body. In the photos, the artist’s face is cropped away and Huang’s anonymous torso becomes an emblem of the Chinese everyman who cannot be separated from his cultural heritage, which, like his racial identity, is as indelible as a tattoo.
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