See me if you can

Chinese artist Liu Bolin's unique style of performance art has him being painted to blend entirely into various backgrounds

It's that time of the year in Bangalore when The Collection, UB City's luxury mall, has art works scattered all over as part of Art Bengaluru, a week-long festival of the arts. It's when Louis Vuitton's window display has to vie with canvases, small and big, for the attention of passers-by. At the fifth edition, among the various works is a curious installation of what seems to be white human figures with wings, made up entirely of tendrils, suspended in the air. A closer look will reveal that the "tendrils" are, in fact, wires hanging from mobile chargers. Titled Charger Series: Peony No.2, this is part of the oeuvre of Liu Bolin, the Chinese artist who is headlining the nine-day event, and is exhibiting in India for the first time.

While the work is arresting, even for a casual shopper Liu is better known for his more dramatic "performance" and photograph series, "Hiding In The City", where he is painted into various backgrounds, blending with them entirely. Liu plans to have a similar performance at another venue in Bangalore in the coming week, at a public spot, though he is yet to iron out the details since he does not know much about the city. "I plan to roam around to understand the city's atmosphere," says Liu, dressed in a white half-sleeved shirt and turquoise blue trousers, a day after the festival inauguration. At the launch, members in the audience got a foretaste of his work when his assistants partially painted him into a shelf full of magazines, while he stood still. His face had been left unpainted, though this would not be the case when he ventures out on his work in the city.

The series originated a decade ago to protest the Chinese government's shutdown of the artists' village, Suo Jia Cun, where Liu too had his studio. He would stand still while others painted him so that he blended into the background, often for hours. "I wanted to use my works to show that the artists and their living places had not been protected. The stillness of my body during the production of the work is a silent protest," he says in a note about the series. He has done similar "performances" in New York as well.

Asked about the difficulties of being an artist in China, the same country in which Ai Weiwei is imprisoned, Liu says that is a different debate and one he does not wish to enter into yet. He admits that his initial works did invite the government's attention and the performances had to be stopped but says things have got better now.

In the 10 years that he has been working in China, it is the problems unique to Chinese society that have influenced his work. "But when I went abroad, to exhibit my works, for instance, people in other countries too face similar problems and that is also an inspiration," he says.

The work using mobile chargers, he has said, "originated from my own easily dissatisfied attitude towards possessions." So how does an artist, whose work also represents a struggle against consumerism, reconcile with the fact that his art is now being displayed in what is possibly its most opulent symbol in Bangalore? Liu takes a more pragmatic view. "The most important thing is not where it is exhibited, but being able to present the art before people."

While the citizens in some quarter of the city are likely to be taken aback by Liu's work next week, Art Bengaluru itself has several other works, including a specially commissioned work titled Nothing/ No Thing by Bose Krishnamachari and several works from Peter Nagy's Nature Morte, among others. Art in a mall is perhaps catching on as a concept, and though purists might be sceptical, the works do perhaps reach more people in this way than in the confines of a gallery.

Art Bengaluru is on till August 30. Full details available on www.artbengaluru.in