Mad For Real (Cai Yuan and Jian Jun Xi)’s oeuvre has continually questioned the relationship of power to the individual. Using a position of resistance Cai and Xi have consistently produced work which is necessarily oppositional yet the warmth and humour of their work also acts to draw viewers in.
CAI YUAN (b. 1956, China) and JIAN JUN XI (b. 1962, China): Also known as “Mad For Real” are Chinese performance team dating back to the 1980s. They emigrated to the UK in the 1980s and continued to work together on many performances including “Soya Sauce and Ketchup Fight” and their highly publicized work “Two Artists Jump on Tracey Emin’s Bed” (1999) at Tate Britain’s Turner Prize Exhibition, as well as “Two Artists Piss on Duchamp’s Urinal,” (2000) at Tate Modern, London. Mad For Real (Cai Yuan and Jian Jun Xi)’s oeuvre has continually questioned the relationship of power to the individual. Using a position of resistance Cai and Xi have consistently produced work which is necessarily oppositional yet the warmth and humour of their work also acts to draw viewers in. Their performances have taken place as radical gestures calling to mind notorious artists of earlier radical art movements but the historical, linguistic and political context of their practice is often related specifically to their origins: China. In “Knell” (2010), an installation work by Jian Jun Xi, a sculpture of Andy Warhol lays upon the Chinese National flag with his hand tied to a rope and bell as if calling all artists to run to his school bell. Inspired by the film Andy Warhol: Made in China, the work investigates the impact of Warhol upon Chinese contemporary art both in imagery and its bonanza. A second work, “Tiannamen” (2008), Duchamp’s urinal lays curiously in Tiannamen Square.