Le Blog by Le Grand Cru

Over the weekend, someone had shown me this artwork done by a man named Liu Bolin. If you “google” his name, there are many different posts on this series of work he’s done. I’ve copied and pasted what he says about this artwork within this post.




Click here for more pictures!

When Concealment Becomes a Strategy
Liu Bolin

Are human beings animals?
Chameleon has the unique property of changing hues to match the color of the surroundings for self-protection. Rattlesnake can bury most of the body in sand soil. This can not only protect itself but also have a better access to food. There are also many animals, such as gecko, beetle etc., which have learnt to deal with the environment and the enemy in the longtime fight of life and death. In order to survive, good concealment has become the most critical factor.

Human beings are not animals! Because human beings do not know how to protect themselves.

In the recent three thousand years history of human civilization, basically the two items are written clearly: one, human beings develop in the destruction of their environment; two, the development of human is full of bad exploitation for themselves. The cost of the brilliant human civilization is that human beings almostly forget they are still animals, and forget their own instinct.

Human beings seem to have forgotten that they still need to think how to survive. When mankind is enjoying its development outcomes, its own greed becomes its grave digger. In human society, concealment is definitely not so simple just making oneself safe. The concept of mankind is denied. Saying the existence of human plays a master or proactive role, it would be better to say that as the concept way’s human beings, they are just using their hands to slowly weaken themselves.

The meaning of human is particularly frail under the cloak of economic development. The disappearance in death is the human’s body, but the slowly weakened in economic development is the human’s spirit. Thinking even becomes the meaning of the life. The latter is more terrible than the former. The war in the first half of the last century and the economic development in the second half had weakened human beings to make anything meaningless. Whether directly or indirectly, would or reluctant, human beings, once considered to be Earth dominated, have gradually being carried punishment by the order of nature.

Perhaps the phenomenon of the human’s existence is the elucidative way to the world.

One handred years ago, each Chinese man had a long plait behind his back. At that time, this was normal. If a man had no plait or cut it short, it was a symbol of his innovative ideas. But now, the plait behind the back previously was the the hallmark of artists, recently becomes the patent of the hairdressers in hair salon, all of who would be disparaged by the majority people with short hair. Long hair and plait themselves are meaningless. Their meaning depends on the outside environment. Human beings are born in society, so our thinkings are fixed by traditional culture. Human beings are so miserable that even their thinkings are copied unconsciously to the next generation.
The mental enthrallment is more terrible than the physical disappearance.

Sometimes I feel fortunate that I was not born in the 1950s. The people in this generation experienced everything. They had many common ecperiences: having a deep feeling to Chairman Mao, cultural revolution, unnormal education, never going to college, obtaining iron rice bowl but meeting laid-off wave, cancelling to distribute houses, starting to buy houses, children going to school at their own expense and so on. Can merely the strength of culture and tradition influence the entire generation’s thinking styles.

Now, in the real material world, the world views of different people’s are also different. Each person chooses his/her own way in the process of contacting outside world. I choose to merge myself into the environment. Saying that I am disappeared in the environment, it would be better to say that the environment has licked me up and I can not choose active and passive relationship.

In the environment of emphasizing cultural heritage, concealment is actually no place to hide.