Modern Chinese artist got his start at body sniffing

“In 1999 Xu Zhen came to the attention of the Shanghai police when he cocurated an exhibition, “Art for Sale,” in a shopping mall. “In Beijing, a prestigious show would be held at the National Art Museum, so I thought a shopping mall would be perfect for Shanghai, where no art museums existed then,” he says. The authorities labeled several works pornographic, including Xu Zhen’s three-channel video From Inside the Body (1999), in which he appears on the left screen as an anonymous man, opposite a woman on the right screen, while the center video shows an empty couch. Both he and the woman begin sniffing themselves and then undress, seemingly in search of a noxious odor. Finally they meet on the couch, not doing anything explicit beyond sniffing each other’s bodies.”