Camouflage Body Painting (part 2)

Liu Bolin – The Invisible Man

Liu Bolin was born in the Province of Shangdong, China, on 1973. He moved to Beijing in 2009. At Beijing, he attended the Central Academy of Fine Art, and got a degree in sculpture in 2001. After graduated from school, Liu had been through a very tough time of his life. “After I graduated from school, for a long time, I had no family, no job, no love in my life… I had no position in society”, said Bolin. Since then, he had the idea of visualize his sense of invisibility. In 2006, he was forced to move out of a commune where the government decided to conduct a redevelopment of the area. Liu Bolin painted himself to protest against this move.

Liu Bolin spends a great amount of time before hand to do the preparation work. He chooses the location in which he will be camouflaged into. He plans the steps on how to do it. With the help of technology, he visualizes the process to give his assistants better ideas. He chooses which assistants will be doing the painting and instructs them carefully. The most difficult part of the whole process is not when his assistants painting his body, but when Bolin has to stand for 5 hours straight at the location. The total process to create a project takes Bolin and his assistants up to half a day. After they’re finished, they take digital camera shots of him from different angles to provide the complete view of his work and to look for suggestions for improvement.

Photographs of Bolin’s works have been exhibited in many big cities in United States and Europe. On October 2011, Bolin had himself camouflage into the Wall Street’s landmark bronze bull and the half-built Freedom Tower at Ground Zero.

The art works of Liu Bolin is not only creative and fascinating, but they also contain messages regarding the current political and social issues. The process of creating the project takes a massive amount of time and effort. However, with Liu’s dedication and passion toward what’s he doing, the hardship does not bother him much as he has said: “That may be my fate. Like death in the snow for a mountain climber. Like seafarers who die at sea. I choose to work this way.”