Why yes, that is a rubber cast of Pan Xing Lei’s, ahem, *entire* body.

It probably wasn’t so comfortable for the artist to cast himself to create this sculptural work (well, technically it’s a piece of performance ephemera, but now it exists as a sculpture - semantics, you know). It is a polyurethane cast of the artist’s body, painted with messy Chinese characters, and stuffed with paper in the hands, head, and feet (and luckily nowhere else).

Now, I am giving the impression that this is a rather dirty work. In fact, this is one of many of the artist’s bodily casts, that are actually inspired by the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. The artist was one of six who installed The Goddess of Democracy monument that day, before governmentally-sanctioned tanks attacked the gathered crowd. Pan Xing Lei was just 19 at the time, and the image of those bodies stayed with him - inspiring his performance and sculptural works since.

This particular rubber man is one iteration of many. In addition to rubber, Pan Xing Lei has also made these figures out of such materials as plastic, fiberglass, and bronze - playing with the hardness, softness and malleability of the human body. Rubbermen have appeared in video works, as solitary sculptures (like this one at SCMA), or in performances - such as one 2001 instance of Pan Xing Lei seated like Buddah amongst multiple rubbermen that were hung up on walls or crumpled on the floor.

Perhaps what makes this particular Rubber Man special is the collection in which it lives. The Smith College Museum of Art has immense depth in its collection of Asian art. In 1913, Charles Lang Freer (yes, the man who gave the Smithsonian Freer Gallery its name) gave SCMA 45 works of art from across Asia. Almost 100 years later, Rubber Man was given to the museum in the same spirit.

Here is the question I’m left with: how does Pan Xing Lei have the patience to cast his entire body?! I’d be busting out of there faster than you can say rubber woman.