ABOVE: Detail from Xiao Yu’s Ruan (1999), which is a real human fetus head grafted onto a real seagull body, preserved in formaldehyde. The work is being “investigated” after being removed from a show of contemporary Chinese art in Bern.

OK, we’ve all watched Six Feet Under, and every Sally Housecoat in the Western Hemisphere is a CSI addict: the sight of putrefying human flesh has lately come to be considered light entertainment. So it’s a little surprising that the above image still inspires such visceral shock and disgust. But it is. This is disgusting. It’s the head of a human fetus grafted on to the body of a seagull with rabbit eyes sewn on to its face. The artist, Xiao Yu, says that the seagull and the fetus both died because there was “something wrong with them,” (this is what he told the Associated Press) and that sewing them together allowed them to “have a new life.” So there’s a statement being made here—our question is whether this statement required, um, human taxidermy.

Evidently, that’s the same question that Adrien de Riedmatten, the concerned citizen who complained to the Bern, Switzerland, District Attorney’s office, also asked. It seems that there is confusion about where and when the fetus head originated (what, did Xiao keep the receipt or something?) and how exactly it shuffled off this mortal coil. Riedmatten refers to it as a “baby,” which is obviously a terminological scab which we will not pick at here. Anyway, the show of Chinese avant-garde art, “Mahjong,” is still forging ahead at the Kunstmuseum Bern without Yu’s piece, which was part of the 2001 Venice Biennale. On August 22 the museum is hosting a symposium with philosophers, ethicists, and artists to decide whether to put Ruan back in.

LINK: L.A. Times > Chinese Artist Defends Fetus Artwork