Hengzhi Gong

Hengzhi Gong

Welcome Dinner

Oil on canvas

120x150cm

Eating humans is a constant theme in literature. In Lu Xun’s novel Medicine, a political militant was killed by the government, and ignorant parents bought bread with his blood in order to cure their kid’s disease. The kids died, anyway, because blood is never medicine. By examining this novel, Jameson believes that the fate of the individual is always a national allegory. I play upon this concept and reverse the object and subject of eating humans. In this painting, cows offer me steak as a welcome dinner. Where does it come from? We have no idea if cows eat their own meat, and such a disguise creates more mysteries that we need to find out.