| Earth—Man was completed in August, 2007. It was scorching hot. At 8 a.m., I went a barber shop in the art district, and had all my hair and facial hair shaved off. At around 9 o’clock, a friend of mine started to paint on my head and my face. This friend is a graphic designer and a tattoo artist. The whole process lasted 19 hours. First, he drew on me a map of the world according to a globe and a map on the computer. Then he went into details using pens of different sizes to fill in colors. When he was almost done, I was feeling like I couldn’t breath, like I was suffocating. I felt really grumpy. He filled in all the colors at around 5 o’clock in the afternoon. After we took a break for an hour, he started filling in the latitudes, longitudes, and the names of the continent. | 
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Xu Hui-Jing
Xu Hui-Jing, Earthââ¬âMan, 2007. Video, miniDV 16:9. Courtesy of Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art.
Earth—Man was completed in August, 2007. It was scorching hot. At 8 a.m., I went a barber shop in the art district, and had all my hair and facial hair shaved off.
At around 9 o’clock, a friend of mine started to paint on my head and my face. This friend is a graphic designer and a tattoo artist. The whole process lasted 19 hours. First, he drew on me a map of the world according to a globe and a map on the computer. Then he went into details using pens of different sizes to fill in colors. When he was almost done, I was feeling like I couldn’t breath, like I was suffocating. I felt really grumpy. He filled in all the colors at around 5 o’clock in the afternoon. After we took a break for an hour, he started filling in the latitudes, longitudes, and the names of the continents. This was a very arduous process. The paint dried really quickly, so my friend couldn’t stop to take long breaks. It was driving him crazy. The whole painting process ended at 4 a.m. the next day.
It took about five minutes to do the video shoot. We had set up the lighting and the background two days ago. I sat down on a plinth, and my friend spun me around slowly as I did some movements ad lib. I have extended 70 percent of the time the video runs for. The reason is that seven is an important number in Chinese philosophy.
Each of us is a universe. We used to be integrated with the earth, but are separated in reality. This is a world where we walk around like fearless monsters. We are limbs cut from a body, a finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a human being.
