Huang Yan (Chinese, b.1966) combines painting, photography, and sculpture to explore modes of narrative and landscape, as well as other traditional forms of artistic representation in contemporary China. Born in Jilin Province, Huang studied at the Changchun Normal Academy, and moved to Beijing in 1987. In his sculpted, painted, and photographed works, pigment and pattern obscure a wide range of materials from meat to busts of Mao Zedong and even human skin. In several series, he evokes the traditional art of Chinese landscape painting with a contemporary twist: he photographs faces, backs, and entire bodies covered with landscape attributes that have been painted or tattooed onto their skin. Huang melds historical Chinese culture with new art forms, alluding to the body and performance art of the Chinese avant-garde. In sculpted works, he covers images of Mao Zedong and the Venus de Milo in painted patterns, merging Pop sensibilities of iconography and replication with allusions to the changing socio-political atmosphere of China following the Cultural Revolution. He has exhibited his work in London, Chicago, New York, Beijing, Milan, Berne, Hong Kong, and other sites around the world, and currently lives and works in Beijing.