闯入者 Intruder

Slapping his own face in front of the audience while repeatedly shouting “history is good for you”…
Riding through the city with a dagger in his mouth, from day to night…
Leaving his body temperature behind on a building…
Holding a personal concert in an abandoned factory…
Dressed in an LED-lit costume, dancing like a ghost in the Fukushima nuclear contamination exclusion zone…

These images are part of performance artist Wang Yanxin’s works, which leave an impression of a mix between personal heroism and a frenzied sense of playful satire. His pieces typically unfold like short theatrical scenes, only to suddenly plunge the audience into an inexplicable sadness. A sense of anger permeates his strong actions and resolute will. Self-punishment, provocation of the audience, or an emotional release—Wang Yanxin’s performances often occur on the edge of losing control. His live performances have a raw, untamed quality, often shocking and even frightening the viewers.

On the other hand, Wang Yanxin has a special emotional connection to lost lives and memories: the vanished factories, the needles lost in the sea, the irradiated residents’ belongings in Fukushima, the dead insects on the street… He tries to use his actions to salvage something (perhaps death or dignity). Although ultimately futile, his body remains powerful yet scarred. He once saw a phrase in a Japanese temple: “In life, everything is a scratch except death.” This tragic sentiment resonates deeply with the emotions in his works.

Wildness and tragedy form the internal tension of his body. He works within paradoxes and tensions, seeking strength in the limits and randomness of the body. He imparts a kind of glory to a body that is inevitably weary and doomed to die, hinting at how performance art can unfold its own narrative through the body as a medium. For Wang Yanxin, performance art is action, not a staged performance. The act itself becomes a repeated ritual about life.

In the past two months, during his residencies in Lijiang and Kunming, Wang Yanxin appeared in the guise of a golden figure: standing in the dark of night beside a country road, illuminated only by passing car headlights, he resembled a ghostly statue—appearing and disappearing, blending into the silence of the night and the sounds of insects and frogs. Before dawn, he carried an ancient courtyard door to a lakeside and painted it gold. The rising sun reflected off the golden door, which from a distance looked like an ancient gateway to eternity beneath the snow-capped mountains. He then lit a dry branch by the lake, the flames illuminating the night sky. Nearby, he struck the water’s surface with a vine whip, the sound of the lash and the roaring fire ringing through the highland lake like a doomsday alarm. In another piece, he launched two giant kites in the wilderness, inscribed with “Like the Sun at Noon” and “Hanging by a Thread,” struggling to keep them airborne in the fierce wind. In yet another image, he mounted a golden horse, standing like a military officer surveying the landscape, motionless in the face of raging flames, his gaze unwavering. Later, in the dead of night, he rode the golden horse through a village, stopping at each house to observe. In an abandoned railway tunnel, he set off one hundred fireworks behind him, standing resolutely before the dazzling display, letting the burning gunpowder scatter in the narrow space, injuring his golden body with each spark. Lastly, he struck two flint stones together one thousand and one times in a dark void, trying to create a fleeting spark of light.

This series of works was named Golden Fable, with an epic quality about it. Dangerous situations, shifting scenes: fire and light, the golden horse and the dark night, strong winds and the lake, the body and the golden form… He is constantly creating a battle for the individual. From his works, you can feel the confrontation between the body and the environment.

The body in a foreign land is sensitive. Time, light, temperature, humidity, topography, wind, objects, people, and local legends—each of these can become a factor that the artist absorbs and uses, becoming a part of the live performance’s charm. Many of Wang Yanxin’s works are completed in different places and settings, which not only highlights the artist’s method of working across various residency projects and art festivals but also points to his approach to the body: placing a role-like body (such as the golden figure) into a live environment shaped by different cultures, geography, and time, allowing the body and the setting to activate each other. Wang Yanxin emphasizes the intervention of the body’s actions in the site-specific environment, transforming the environment into a situation—the human situation, more specifically, the situation of humanity facing death. Waiting, resisting, being determined, or celebrating…

In this world, which is bound to decay and full of turbulence, the “Golden Wang Yanxin” arriving on horseback is like an intruder, encountering the “world of the flesh” in the midst of darkness and withered wood, under the scorching sun and roaring flames, accepting suffering.

For Wang Yanxin, the golden might symbolize an ending. These “Golden Fables,” tinged with apocalyptic hues, bring to mind the visions in the Book of Revelation. Before the final outcome arrives, we are already deeply shaken.

August 9, 2021, Luo Fei，Rainy Night, Kunming