Respect and Bless
Performance Art
Performance art is the main artistic form of Fan Hua’s practice. This work borrows the ancient and representative symbolic metaphor of prayer flags from Tibetan Buddhism to respond to events since the beginning of 2022. The artist reflects on a period where, due to COVID-19, the identities of social individuals were erased by the government through political and violent means, leaving only bare lives.
After witnessing the alienation of daily life and the cold, cruel numbers of the deceased, the artist chose the prayer flag as a symbol to express his dissatisfaction with the authorities’ actions, offer condolences for the lives lost, and convey a sense of regret and a cherishing of life.
Using the approach of screen printing, the artist transforms the symbol. He replaces the traditional banner cloth of the prayer flags with masks and substitutes the original form and content with representative red images (photos or video screenshots) of slogans seen in neighborhoods during quarantine. The performance is situated in various locations, such as natural environments, abandoned gas stations, and bridges in use, to represent the comprehensive and pervasive coverage of the government’s actions.
