This human/bird hybrid swimming in formaldehyde is an artwork by Xiao Yu. It’s part of an exhibit of Chinese avant-garde art from the last twenty-five years now on display at the Kunstmuseum (Museum of Fine Arts) Bern, Switzerland. The show, entitled Mahjong, contains 320 pieces from the massive collection of Uli Sigg, a Swiss businessperson and former ambassador to Beijing. From an article in the Daily Times:
How about confronting a pillar of fat collected from plastic surgery clinics, a horse’s skin blown up like a balloon, or a foetus grafted onto a seagull swimming in formaldehyde? Far from stereotypical propaganda posters or traditional silk prints, a major exhibition in Switzerland’s capital tackles preconceptions and provides a snapshot of China’s contemporary art scene over the past quarter century, its political undercurrent and its challenge to a host of taboos…Sigg’s passion began in the late 1970s, and his 1,200-work collection is an unrivaled record of the flowering of China’s art scene. Chinese artists began breaking taboos after Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, following almost three decades of isolation from international trends, when their work was meant to serve the interests of the people — and the Communist Party.
Link to Daily Times article, Link to Kunstmuseum Bern, Link to a SwissInfo article (Thanks, Alex Boucherot, via AEIOU!)