Yang Shaobin / China b.1963 / X-Blind Spot No. 4 2008 / Oil on canvas / 354 x 240cm / Gift of the artist through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2010 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Yang Shaobin / Courtesy: Long March Space

YANG SHAOBIN
X-Blind Spot No. 4 2008

Not Currently on Display

Yang Shaobin’s ‘X-Blind Spot’ paintings amplify the unseen within our bodies, the community and the resources that sustain our way of life.

These monumental canvases depict the formaldehyde-preserved lungs of Chinese coal miners who were suffering from black lung, a disease which has also been found quite recently among Queensland miners. Working primarily in a realist style of painting, Yang’s works respond to and subvert the idealised depictions of rural labourers created for and during China’s Cultural Revolution (1966–76).

The paintings in this series indicate the physical costs of the mining industry on the individual: from the chronic breathing ailments resulting from exposure to coal dust, and the very real physical dangers of blasting and working with heavy machinery, to the erasure of individuality that occurs within such a large number of workers.

Born in Tangshan, Hebei Province, in 1963, Yang Shaobin is an internationally recognised painter best known for his painful and often tortured subjects. The artist moved to Beijing in the early 1990s and joined an early avant-garde art group that was based near the Old Summer Palace. Influenced by Francis Bacon and Arnulf Rainer, Yang says his works are often created to elicit discomfort or painful feelings from the viewer and to draw awareness of a social consciousness.

Discussion Questions

1. Why do you think the artist chose to paint lungs on such a large scale?

2. What visual devices are being used in this work?

3. How has the artist used parts of the human body to communicate thoughts, feelings and issues?

Classroom Activities

1. Select a human organ to communicate a health issue. Use an image of this organ in a painting, drawing or Photoshop composition.

2. Identify an instance of an organisation’s negligence that you feel strongly about. How would you advocate for the victims involved?