This exceptionally gifted performance artist, sculptor and oil painter was born in 1969 in Hubei Province and graduated with a degree in painting from the Hubei Academy of Arts in 1991. He began making his nude performance pieces in Beijing in the early 1990’s. At that time, he and other artists established the artists’ colony Beijing East Village and performance art or phenomena like American body art or Viennese Actionism were unknown in China. Ma Liuming’s performance was personage is Fen – a man’s body with a woman’s face. Using make – up to transform himself into his female alter ego he adresses questions of gender and sexuality, the ambiguity of male and female, between appearance and actuality which he believes exists in everyone. He does not want to attack the state of the hypocrisy of his countrymen in contrast to certain Western tendencies and liberties. His enemy is himself. Imprisoned in a male body with a female face he first needs to clarify his own role. – 88MOCCA -The Museum of Chinese Contemporay Art on the web