Ren Hang

For these erotic undertones, he was arrested by PRC authorities several times. He received the backing of the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who included Ren in his 2013 Netherlands show, Fuck Off 2 The Sequel, and curated the photographer's 2014 exhibition in Paris, France. "The images are fresh, but also empty and superficial. They contain a deep sadness within", commented by Ai Weiwei on Ren's artworks. Ren's erotic, playful and casual yet provocative expression gained him worldwide fame and recognition.

• Name — Ren Hang • Born — March 30, 1987 • Birthplace — Changchun, Jilin, China • Died — February 24, 2017 (aged 29) • Place of death — Beijing, China • Known for — Photographs about nudity, gender and homosexuality Ren Hang (March 30, 1987 – February 24, 2017) was a Chinese photographer and poet. During Ren's incipient career, he was known mostly for nude photographic portraits of his friends. His work is significant for its representation of Chinese sexuality within a heavily censored society. For these erotic undertones, he was arrested by PRC authorities several times. He received the backing of the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who included Ren in his 2013 Netherlands show, Fuck Off 2 The Sequel, and curated the photographer's 2014 exhibition in Paris, France. "The images are fresh, but also empty and superficial. They contain a deep sadness within", commented by Ai Weiwei on Ren's artworks. Ren's erotic, playful and casual yet provocative expression gained him worldwide fame and recognition.

Ren was born in 1987, in a suburb of Changchun, Jilin province, in northeastern China. In 2007, in order to relieve the boredom of studying advertising at college, he bought a point-and-shoot camera and began photographing his friends. As a self-taught photographer, he said his style of photography was inspired by the artist Shūji Terayama.

Ren suffered from depression. He posted a series of diary entries titled "My depression" on his blog, recording the fear, anxiety and internal conflicts he experienced. On January 27, 2017, which is also the eve of the Chinese New Year, Ren posted his last Weibo, saying that "every year my wish is always the same: to die earlier." Ren died by suicide on February 24, 2017, in Beijing.

Ren published his first English translated collection of his poetry in January 2017 by BHKM, New York, which selectively contained his poems from 2007 to 2016 named Word or two, and a collection of poetry in Chinese by Neurasthenia, Taiwan, which contained his poems from 2007 to 2013 named Poem Collection of Renhang. This poetry is mainly about his enthusing emotions on describing the ideal love and life with lovers as well as the fear and loneliness when losing loves. The emotional erotic poetry usually comprises a handful of short lines, the tone ranging from humorous to sensual to dark. Here is an extract from a 2016 poem called Love: Love My kisses compactly join as a line, like the snake swims around each rugged reef on your trembling body, then you turn into the snake, I turn into the reef, and then we turn into snakes, intertwining together, we turn into reefs, striking each other. Inside the bedroom filed with our fingerprints, those fingerprints keep enlarging, turn into growth rings, turn into mazes. We are lost with the whole world. Ren Hang also expressed his homosexual experiences and identity in his poem collection published in 2016 by the independent publishing house EDITIONS BESSARD. Here is a poem written by Ren in 2008: Throughout his life, he endured a long battle with depression, an experience he would often document on his website under a menu item titled My Depression. Here he recorded, sometimes in the form of poetry, his inner struggles against depression, including frequent hallucinations and hearing voices. In one poem, he wrote: Gift Life indeed is a precious gift but I often think it seems sent to a wrong person

Ren Hang is noted to be greatly influenced by Chinese and Asian contemporary art and in particular, Japanese photographer and contemporary artist Nobuyoshi Araki, as well as the Japanese poet, film director, and photographer Shuji Terayama. Ren Hang mainly worked with a simple point-and-shoot camera. He would direct the models as to how to place their bodies and shoot in quick succession. Genitalia, breasts and anuses were not covered up, but featured, or accentuated with props and close-ups. Colors were rich and high in contrast, increasing visual impact. This, along with the fact all bodies were slim, lithe and relatively hairless, made the impact of his photographs more impressive. His work communicated a raw, stark aesthetic that countered taboos and celebrated sexuality. Someone concluded it was this contemporary form of poeticism in a visual context in which Ren Hang expressed themes of identity, the body, love, loss and death. Nudity is not a theme in art which can be widely accepted by the Chinese older generation. Ren Hang's works are sometimes misinterpreted by the public as pornography. Although some have written that Ren Hang used his photographs to challenge Chinese cultural norms of shame around nudity, he did not believe he was challenging the stereotype and leading a revolution. For him, nudity and sexuality are natural themes which he used in his work. Nudes are there since always. We were born nude. So talking about revolution, I don't think there's anything to revolutionize. Unless people are born with clothes on, and I want to take their clothes off, then I think this is a revolution. If it was already like that, then it's not a revolution. I just photographed things on their more natural conditions. He said he was not trying to liberate nudity and sexuality since he believed that the Chinese young generation was open-minded and less affected by the old-fashioned cultures. When Ren Hang talked about the question whether the topic of sexuality was still a taboo in China, he said: I don't think it's related to our times, these are individual cases. Like how to say it, I think it depends on different people, it doesn't really relate to other things. I was not in the whole parents told you that you can only have sex if you get married era. The time when I grew up was already past that period, it was already different, everyone was already more relaxed.

• I've got a Little Problem (2017) – documentary directed by Ximing Zhang, 44 min Trailer 1, Trailer 2,

• In Addition to Sleep, Fotogallerie vaslisouza, Oslo, 2014 • Hide by Ren Hang, MOST 2414 & MOST Gallery, Soy Sauce Factory, Bangkok, 2014/15 • In Addition to Sleep, Copenhagen Photo Festival, Copenhagen, Denmark, curated by Fotogallerie vaslisouza, 2014 • The Wild, OstLicht, Vienna, Austria, 2015 • Ren Hang, 2014, Gallery Capricious 88, 88 Eldridge Street, 5th FL, New York, USA, March 6 – April 5, 2015 • OccupyAtopos exhibition, part of the artist residency program, ATOPOS cvc, Athens, Apr 22 - Jun 17, 2015 • Athens Love, Klein Sun Gallery, New York, 2015 • Naked/Nude, Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 2017 • Human Love, Fotografiska, Stockholm, Sweden, 2017 • Ren Hang, posthum, Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig, Germany, coop. w. OstLicht, Vienna, 2017/18 • Love, Ren Hang, posthum, Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, 2019; C/O Berlin, Berlin, 2019/20 • Ren Hang. Nudi, posthum, Centro per l'arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato, Italy, 2020