Han Xiao, third right, with his "artistic team" and subject.
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The controversial exhibition No Plastic Surgery Today took place at a fine arts museum in Beijing on Aug. 26.
Previously, on the afternoon of Aug. 9 in the hallway of a local hospital, plastic surgeon Han Xiao had carried out a procedure in front of numerous spectators including artists, commentators and reporters.
The procedure was dubbed Plastic Surgery: the Behavioral Art of Han Xiao.
Peng Feng, a professor of art at Peking University and the organizer of the exhibition, says Han's surgery constitutes art since it matches people's aesthetic desires.
After a brief opening ceremony, Han stepped into the operating room and worked his art upon his female subject, to whom he administered an anesthetic before slicing open each breast from one side and inserting implants. The breast enlargement procedure lasted around 30 minutes.
Xia Yianguo, a commentator on the arts, does not consider Han's surgery to qualify as performance art, in which the artist displays his concept and thought during the process, but is rather a simple display of his daily work. Xia says any object from daily life can be elevated to art, depending on how the artist transforms his or her experience. But Han's surgery conveys only a technical rather than artistic effect, Xia said.
Han denies his exhibition is intended for the purposes of advertising. "I'm not opening a hospital in Beijing. Some artists are good at working with iron, others make art with rattan artwork and I am good at plastic surgery, which I believe has artistic value. In the future, my art will evolve around this method," the surgeon said.
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