How to Become a Professional Artist
Performance
2025
Photo by: Guanqiao Yu
The performance is both a self-confrontation for the performer and a chaotic dissolution of the industrialization of art. The process of compressing the artist's identity into a professional standard is filled with textual norms, packaging strategies and marketing rules. The performance invites the audience to construct an image of the “professional artist” through interactive responses and voting, including artist biographies, artist statements, and portraits. By writing and displaying these elements on her own body, the artist reflects on the art world's demands to commodify and identify the artist. The combination of food, edible materials, and digital tools reinforces the theme of how artists construct their self-image in the face of market pressures, while challenging the tension between art-making and outside standards. Ultimately, the performer swallows the edible material filled with textual information provided by the audience until the body is unable to digest and react properly. Through humor and critique, the work reveals the absurdity of the professionalization of art and invites the audience to reflect on who should define the identity of the artist.