Tong Wenmin: A Walking Forest

This paper considers the relationship between human beings and the natural world in the practice of Chongqing-based artist Tong Wenmin (b. 1989), who has been using her body as an interface to explore human-nature relationship and issues around cohabitation. Before initiating her most recent ongoing project “From South to North,” Tong spent one year collecting various plants in different regions across China, pressed them into specimens, and imprinted her entire body with them through repetitive sunbathing. Eventually, the plants became pale silhouettes on her skin, transferring Tong into a “walking forest” as she calls it. This paper focuses on the process and aesthetic and meaning-making mode of imprinting, a time-based process involving physical contact, and discusses how the artwork reflects the interaction of natural forces and artistic/human agency. On the one hand, Tong controls which plants and how they are transferred onto her body. On the other hand, she is subject to the natural forces of the weather. Based on close readings of and writings about her artworks, a conversation with the artist, and socio-political contextualization, this paper suggests reading the artist’s transformation into a “walking forest” as a critical engagement with cohabitation from a specific locale.