13 Facts About Liu Bolin

Liu Bolin is a contemporary artist born in China's Shandong province, who specialises in self-portraits where he is disguised to match his surroundings.

Liu Bolin earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Shandong College of Arts in 1995 and his Master of Fine Arts from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 2001.

Liu Bolin's work has been exhibited in museums around the world.

Liu Bolin belongs to the generation that came of age in the early 1990s, when China emerged from the rubble of the Cultural Revolution and was beginning to enjoy rapid economic growth and relative political stability.

Liu Bolin was moved to create his "Hiding in the City" series after the destruction of the Beijing artists' village Suo Jia Cun in November 2005.

At the time of the destruction, Liu Bolin had been working in Suo Jia Cun, previously given the title of Asia's largest congregation of artists.

In "Hiding in the City", Liu Bolin made one of his particular focuses slogans as an educational tool used within Communist societies, pointing out that many people would become used to the slogans over time and cease to pay conscious attention to the messages' effects on the public's thinking.

Rather than painting himself into the background of various man-made structures, as he did in "Hiding in the City", here Liu Bolin lay on surfaces during periods of rain, keeping the space directly below his body dry.

The flat human figure created by his presence always quickly disappeared when Liu Bolin moved away, demonstrating the extent to which humans are helpless before their environment.

Liu Bolin followed up his Beijing series of "Hiding in the City" with two derivative series of performances captured in Venice, Milan, Rome, Pompeii, Verona and New York City.

In June 2011, Liu Bolin created his Hiding in New York series, in which he incorporated iconic New York sites into his work.

Liu Bolin was featured as a prominent artist in a Newsweek profile titled Eli Klein on Riding the Wave of China's Contemporary Art Scene.

In January 2013, Liu Bolin created the artwork for New Jersey hard rock band Bon Jovi's 2013 album What About Now.