Cao Yu (artist)

Cao Yu (Chinese: 曹雨; pinyin: Cáo Yǔ, born 1988) is a contemporary artist whose work encompasses installation, sculpture, video and performance. Born in Liaoning Province, China, she lives and works in Beijing.

Cao Yu 曹雨
Born1988
Liaoning Province, China
NationalityChinese
Known forInstallation art, Video art, Sculpture, Performance art

She is best known for her work Fountain (2015), a silent video loop in which the artist repeatedly squeezes milk from her breasts. The piece, presented at her graduation exhibition at Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, was almost banned from the show for obscenity.[1]

Fountain (2015)

Displayed on a vertical HD television, Fountain shows a continuous moving-image loop of the artist "forcefully squeezing two mountain-like breasts until pure white milk spurts out." [2] The video, whose soundtrack is silent, is cropped to show only the artist's breasts and hands in the action of expelling fluid in an upward fountain-like spray. The sequence lasts for over ten minutes.

Cao Yu made the piece soon after giving birth, when the physical transformation of motherhood caused her to lactate incessantly. According to the artist, "Fountain appears beautiful and explosive, but to me it’s about pain. The frequent pain from mastitis forced me to release the milk trapped in my body. At that moment I felt how amazing my body is, and I wanted to create a fountain by using my body as a vessel."[3] She describes the work's powerful, explosive action as a display of "masculinity through a female body" that achieves "a wonderful state of androgyny."[3]

Although the work's name echoes Marcel Duchamp's Fountain (1917), Cao Yu's Fountain is a direct tribute to Bruce Nauman's Self-Portrait as a Fountain (1966),[3][4] a colour photograph in which the American artist spurts water from his mouth in imitation of nude statues found in decorative fountains. Nauman made a number of text-based works that used the statement “The true artist is an amazing luminous fountain.”[5]

The piece also references Ingres' The Source (1856),[3] an oil painting that depicts a female nude holding a pitcher of flowing water, in reference to the Muses and inspiration in classical literature.

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References
  1. Rits-Volloch, Rachel. "Cao Yu: Portrait of the Artist with an Hourglass Waist". Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  2. "CaoYu". www.caoyuart.com. Retrieved 2018-04-05.
  3. "Cao Yu 曹雨 – A Wonderful State of Androgyny". Loreli. Retrieved 2018-04-05.
  4. "ArtAsiaPacific: Why The Performance". artasiapacific.com. Retrieved 2018-04-05.
  5. "Whitney Museum of American Art: Bruce Nauman: Self Portrait as a Fountain". collection.whitney.org. Retrieved 2018-04-05.
  • "曹雨". China Internet Information Center (art.china.cn). 2016-12-08.
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