Planting Grass - Yang Zhichao
In his piece Hide (2004) Yang, with the help of artist Ai Weiwei and a surgeon, explores this development. Sitting in Beijing’s art district Caochangdi, Yang submits his body to science and has a small metal object implanted into his leg. Ai did not reveal what he had chosen to implant—hence the title of the piece. However, to this day, Yang has this foreign material in his leg and continues to function as normal.
This is in stark contrast to his other works Planting Grass of 2000 and Earth of 2004, where he had a surgical incision on his shoulder planted out with creek grass and then had a surgeon plant some earth into the roof of his stomach. Yang was in immense pain for each of the performances but, tellingly, while his body rejected the natural products of grass and dirt, his body continues to exist unchanged and unencumbered with the metal object in his leg. While his body enveloped and adapted to the metal piece, the natural products were rejected in a violent, painful and infected manner that has left considerable scar tissue on both his shoulder and stomach.