Art from Urine: Does Artistic Expression Really Imitate Life?

It is said that artists get their inspiration from everything around them.

Art is in the air, on the ground, around the corner, up the street, in your home and in, of all places…the bathroom.

In the case of Taiwanese graduate art student, Tien-hsiang Huang, the artistic inspiration for his prize-winning artwork has come from his very own bodily fluids.

After seeing blood in the toilet bowl one day, instead of running to the doctor, Huang, a graduate student at the Tainan National University of the Arts, created a red and yellow portrait of the Marvel comic book character Iron Man.

The artist won the equivalent of US$13,550 and competed against more than 600 artists and 1,923 works from all across Taiwan.

Huang has been fascinated by comic books, particularly Spider-Man and Batman, since he was a child, and has a formidable collection of Iron Man products.

His first artistic challenge was to locate a toilet with an oblong shape that resembled the outline of Iron Man’s face. This quest alone took him more than two months.

Incredibly, his work–which was created by eating pigmentation that produced red, black and green urine and then arranged to resemble the Iron Man character–produced a foul odor while on exhibition.

To add to the grossness of this project, while awaiting the arrival of the judges, Huang kept spitting on his work because saliva created the foam for the character’s mouth!

One of the judges referred to Huang’s work as an emerging type of body art.

“He allowed his internal body to become the mechanism of manufacturing images, smashing traditional impressions of art,” said judge Chien-hu Huang.

One could say “to each his own” when it comes to artistic expression, but one can only wonder what is next for this artist’s vision.

Could it be portraits made from rotting food, semen, menstrual blood, used cat litter or even feces?

Whatever the case, don’t eat anything for at least a half hour after reading this, and check out this American’s artistic–rather, gross artistic–ideas.

(Link)

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