A Tale of Metamorphosis
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lost flayed skin in the face of the Buddha that is made of cow hide. Sculpted like
bas-relief, the Buddha’s face with the archaic smile of Ancient Greece soothes
the viewer and provides relief. It is like the Christian faith that addresses Saint
Bartholomew’s pain and suffering during his martyrdom because he is
compensated greatly by God as he is admitted to the heavenly kingdom. The
persecuted image of an overmuscular man seems to be transformed into an
image of the enlightened being in Nirvana. The artist affirms that to him art is
“another kind of religion” that provides a “feeling to save” people—Christians
and Buddhists alike—and eases their suffering.11 This redemptive component of
art is enacted in My New York and grants Meat-man a super-heroic appearance
in which the viewer finds consolation.
Zhang Huan’s Meat Man denies our easy access to the body. Instead of
making statements, Meat-Man poses questions about our certain convictions in
what is good, bad, right, or wrong, and presents his own case as an ambiguous
being that can be either, neither, and both. The metamorphosis happening here
does not aspire to create another superhero for American popular culture or a
Chinese substitute but complicates the meaning of the body as it oscillates
between humanity and animality, the power and the powerless, war and peace,
Christian and Buddhist, the East and the West, and good and evil. It is both an
evocation of brutality and an insp \