CANG XIN
b. 1967, MongoliaCang Xin was born in 1967 in Baotou, Inner Mongolia. Cang is a Beijing-based performance and conceptual artist. He entered the Tianjin Academy of Music in 1986 and began to paint in 1991. In 1993, he moved to Beijing’s “East Village”, where he began a series of performances such as the Trampling Faces, the Lick series, and the Virus series.
At “East Village,” Cang joined a group of artists who were famous for their challenging performance art. One of their group performances To Add One Meter to an Unknown Mountain (1995) has since become one of the defining images of Chinese contemporary art. In his artistic practice, Cang plays the part of a “Shaman,” experiencing the world and its multifarious offerings through his bodily senses. To him, art is a way of life that sits easily with his self-conception as a modern-day shaman, heir to the nature-magic tradition of his native Mongolia.
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