To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain
work of art by Zhang Huan in 1995
To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain (Chinese: 为无名山增高一米; pinyin: wèi wú míng shān zēng gāo yì mǐ) is a collective performance art work done by Chinese artist Zhang Huan in 1995. Ten Beijing East-Village artists, Wang Shihua, Cang Xin, Gao Yang, Zuoxiao Zuzhou, Ma Zongyin, Duan Yingmei, Zhu Ming, Ma Liuming, Zhang Binbin and Zhang Huan himself, laid their naked body on top of each other until they added another meter to the Miaofeng Mountain, which is on the outskirts of Beijing.
The work was originally photographed by Lv Nan. The ten artists involved in the work each kept a photographic negative that slightly differs from the other artists' negatives—either a participant faced a different direction or someone's leg lifted up a little.
Social context
In the mid-1980s, under the influence of western modernist and postmodernist art forms which were introduced to China after the reform and opening up, a group of Chinese visual artists started to experiment with conceptual performance art. Through such art form, they showed their intention to “move out of the state-controlled gallery system” and "act out" their art in the public sphere.
In the early 1990s, an avant-garde artistic community called “the Beijing East-Village” emerged on the urban edge of Beijing. Living in shelters built up for migrant workers, the small group of artists from different parts of China gathered and created collaborative performance work in and around the area. Zhang Huan, Zhu Ming and Ma Liuming, the leading artists of the community, mainly focused their works on exploring and reflecting “gender, sexuality, and physical and psychological endurance.” To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain is one of the performance works done by Zhang Huan during this time period.
Creation
To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain was created on May 11, 1995.
The public source identifies “To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain” as work of art by Zhang Huan in 1995. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Meter, Anonymous and Mountain.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain”, the useful work is to connect “work of art by Zhang Huan in 1995” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 22, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q85809865. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1995.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain primary sources, To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain archive and Meter research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain”?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.