Zhang Huan is a Chinese performance artist, painter, photographer, and sculptor. Perhaps best known for performances that test his own physical and mental endurance, Zhang creates symbolic self-portraits that question the role of family and culture in shaping contemporary life. He staged his first performance, Angel (1993), at the National Art Museum of China, wherein the artist laid almost naked in the entrance hall, covering his body red liquid and parts of a dismembered doll in a reference to the controversial one-child policy. Throughout his practice, the artist regularly tackles issues of politics, religion, and overpopulation in China. By using materials like ash and incense as well as subjects like Confucius and the Buddha, Zhang draws attention to his cultural history and the complicated ways he identifies and rejects it. Born in 1965 in Anyang, China, he went on to receive his MA from the China Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 1993. Today, his works can be found in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the San Diego Museum of Art, the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, and the Harvard University Art Museum, among others. Zhang lives and works between Beijing, China and New York, NY.