Considered the first female performance artist in China, she has become an emblematic figure in the landscape of international contemporary art. She gained worldwide attention in 1989 with the action “Dialogue”, in which she shot at her own installation during the exhibition China/Avant-Garde at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing: a provocative gesture that marked a turning point in Chinese art. Her practice is based on intuition, perception and uncertainty, and develops through works that arise from personal emotions but take on a collective and symbolic force. Among the most notable performances from this period are “Sperm” (2006), “Wedlock” (2009), “Drunk” (2009), up to “Purge” (2013), a naked swimming action in the Grand Canal of Venice, presented at the opening of the collateral exhibition “Grand Canal” at the 55th Venice Biennale: a radical gesture that triggered an international debate on individual freedom and gender equality. In the following years, she broadened her thematic horizon with works such as “One”, “Money Laundering” and “Poetic Code”, focused on the body, identity and the political dimension of artistic action. She was among the seventy artists selected for the exhibition “Art and China after 1989” at the Guggenheim Museum in New York (2017), and has exhibited at Tate Modern (London, 2018) and at the MoMA (New York), where her work “Dialogue” is now part of the permanent collection. She lives and works between Beijing and Australia.