Diabetic
Zhao Gang
赵刚
Production date
2011
Object Detail
Media
oil on canvas
Measurements
triptych 840 x 400 cm
Notes
In 2011, preparing for an exhibition in Beijing’s Today Art Museum, Zhao was considering how best to manage its enormous spaces. Thinking back to the monumental canvases of the modern masters he had seen in New York, Zhao decided to make a series of very large paintings that he described in conversation as ‘beyond the people’s imagination of painting’. But also, he adds, ‘China is like America, everything has to be big.’ He hired two artists’ models from the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts, in Shenyang. When they arrived, each woman was carrying a large plastic bag filled with different medicines – both were diabetic, an increasing health problem in newly affluent China. The resulting series of monumentally sized nudes subverts the erotically charged gaze of the western genre with Zhao’s deliberate selection of his subjects: the paintings depict older women from northern China, their life experiences written on their bodies and their skin.
At 8 metres high, Diabetic (2011) is confronting. Painted in a deliberately crude manner, a middle-aged woman stands in the centre of the canvas, feet planted squarely on the floor and hands on hips. Cruelly highlighted as if by an unforgiving spotlight, she does not meet our gaze, but seems lost in her own thoughts. Her heavy, pendulous breasts, rolls of flesh, and swollen stomach speak of a life of hard work and endurance. She is a survivor, and as such she seems to represent the resilience of the Chinese people weathering difficult times. Zhao Gang describes her as a matriarch, symbolising the sometimes terrifying power of the Chinese mother.
At 8 metres high, Diabetic (2011) is confronting. Painted in a deliberately crude manner, a middle-aged woman stands in the centre of the canvas, feet planted squarely on the floor and hands on hips. Cruelly highlighted as if by an unforgiving spotlight, she does not meet our gaze, but seems lost in her own thoughts. Her heavy, pendulous breasts, rolls of flesh, and swollen stomach speak of a life of hard work and endurance. She is a survivor, and as such she seems to represent the resilience of the Chinese people weathering difficult times. Zhao Gang describes her as a matriarch, symbolising the sometimes terrifying power of the Chinese mother.
Accession number
2018.076