Li executes most of his performances in the heavily policed public spaces of Hangzhou. This one-minute video shows him squatting in a supermarket trolley while clinging to a slow-moving car. The performance ends abruptly when the car accelerates and Li falls off the cart, rolling along the busy road. The artist’s absurd act is an attempt to reveal the inherently unpredictable nature of tightly controlled contexts. The work also questions the meaning of success and failure in artmaking.
Li Ming (b. 1986, Yuanjiang) is an artist based in Hangzhou who executes many of his performances in heavily policed public spaces. He graduated from the New Media Department of the China Academy of Fine Arts in 2008, the same year he co-founded Double Fly Art Center, a collective centred on multidisciplinary practice and performative interventions. Li’s work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Guggenheim in New York, and the Rubell Family Collection in Florida, among others.
