Location: Beijing - 2007
8-channel video installation, sound, 3- to 6-min loops
Lu Yan and Sun Mei are obsessed with their appearance, in particular with their body proportions. Like many other Chinese women and men, they want to be taller. The Western ideal of the perfect body has found its way into modern China, and in order to have the longer legs that guarantee a successful life, young people choose to undergo a very painful leg-lengthening operation.
Lu Yan’s legs have both been broken and steel pins inserted on either side of the bones. Attached to a stretching device, the pins have to be tightened on a daily basis, in spite of the unbearable pain this produces.
This installation is made possible by the Mondriaan Fonds
