Zhang Huan was born in 1965 in Anyang, Henan Province. In 1984, he enrolled in the Oil Painting Programme at the Fine Arts College of Henan University, receiving formal academic training. After graduating in 1988, he taught at Zhengzhou Education College. In 1991, Zhang moved to Beijing and joined the postgraduate programme at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. In 1993, he co-founded the Beijing East Village art community alongside Ma Liuming and other artists in the eastern part of Beijing’s Third Ring Road. During this period, he created a series of extreme performance art pieces using the body as a medium, exploring the relationship between the human body, the environment, and society. In 1998, Zhang relocated to New York, where his work began to gain international recognition.

This series is a significant outcome of Zhang Huan’s experimental performance art practice during the Beijing East Village period in the mid-1990s. The Skin series consists of 20 sequential self-portraits in which the artist distorts his own facial features through physical manipulation. In these images, Zhang presents a frontal portrait, forcefully squeezing, pulling, and stretching his cheeks, eyebrows, and lips with his hands, causing his features to contort and deform. His once-normal face is kneaded into grotesque shapes, with folds of skin bulging and eyes and mouth twisted. Rendered in black and white, the absence of colour eliminates distractions, drawing focus to the transformations in form and the intricate details of skin texture. By using his own skin as a malleable artistic material, Zhang symbolizes the ways in which society molds and reshapes personal identity while also reflecting the struggles of the individual under pressure. He seeks to make viewers aware that the body itself is a language—one that can express what spoken words often cannot. This seemingly painful yet composed act prompts deeper questions: Is our “face” truly our own, or does it belong to society? Under pressure, what do we ultimately become?