Collection: Sheng Qi

After the student uprising in Tiananmen Square in 1989, Chinese performance artist Sheng Qi (b. 1965) left Beijing. To protest the repression of the arts in China, he cut off his left hand's pinkie finger and buried it in a flowerpot. This was his very graphic and very permanent way of leaving behind a piece of himself, physically and spiritually, in the country he loves. A graduate of the Central Academy of Art and Design in Beijing, Qi has also studied and worked in Italy, and earned his MFA at London's renowned Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. Qi returned to China in 1998, and continues to work there today. His bold work grows out of his early involvement in the “New Art Movement", a group of young Chinese artists that gained prominence in the mid-80's by using their bodies in their work, often as a medium.