Zhu Yu (artist) - Significant Works

Significant Works

The Foundation of All Epistemology: This work appeared in the 1998 group exhibition It’s All Right in Shanghai. For this piece, Zhu Yu cut and boiled five human brains which were purchased from a local hospital. He placed them in neatly labeled jars that he then signed with his own name. Zhu put these jars of brains up for sale in a market that sponsored the exhibit. He ended up selling 15 bottles each for the price of 98 yuans.

Eating People: In his performance art piece Eating People, Zhu photographs himself cooking and eating a human fetus that he divided into five parts. Zhu quotes that “I herewith announce my intention and my aim to eat people as a protest against mankind’s moral idea that he/she cannot eat people.” In further response to Zhu’s bold performance, The Ministry of Culture cited a menace to social order and the spiritual health of the Chinese people, and banned exhibitions involving culture, animal abuse, corpses, and overt violence and sexuality. However, this piece did not even appear at the Fuck Off exhibit; The night before the exhibition, Ai Weiwei collaborated with Zhu and the photographs were removed from the gallery. This piece was thought particularly controversial, and organizers did not want to risk government censorship for the rest of the exhibit. The response to this work stemmed from its appearance on the internet shortly after. Eating People appeared in Malaysia's Perdan Weekly without caption and generated the question of whether eating babies was accepted in Asia on various myth-debunking websites.

Pocket Theology: Appearing in the 1999 group exhibition Post-Sense Sensibility- Alien Bodies & Delusion in Beijing, curated by Wu Meichun and Qiu Zhije. A long coiling rope was gripped by a severed, decomposing arm which was suspended by a meat hook. This display was held in a small room in the basement that was being rented by a group of Chinese artists who organize the exhibition. Viewers were forced to walk over the rope which filled the entire space.

Skin Graft: This performance art installation appeared in the 2000 exhibition Infatuation with Injury organized by Li Xianting. In the exhibit, Zhu uses his own flesh as a canvas. Photos were shown of trunk of a quartered pig laying on a hospital bed. Zhu grafted a piece of his own skin onto a section of damaged skin from the pig. Two photos of this process appeared in the exhibit; one that showed the surgical process, and another which featured the artist sewing his own skin onto the pig carcass. Zhu stood by the exhibit and lifted his shirt to show the scar which stood as evidence of the procedure.

Leftover: This series was exhibited by the Xin Beijing Art Gallery at the China International Gallery Exposition. Zhu photographed plates that held bits of leftover food, and then painted those images on canvas with oil. Eight paintings appeared at the Xin Beijing Art Gallery.