Newman Huo

ZHANG DALI, a Beijing-based artist known for his long-term focus on migrant workers, is showing more than 40 works in an exhibition in the He Xiangning Art Museum until March 29.

The exhibition showcases the artist’s representative works created with multiple media such as graffiti, photography, sculpture, oil painting and installations from 1995 through 2008.

Among them, the first series is titled “Dialogue and Demolition,” which comprises a group of documentary photographs of his early graffiti art.

Born in 1963 in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, Zhang graduated from the Central Academy of Art and Design in Beijing in 1987. Later, he went to Italy, where he discovered graffiti art.

From 1995 to 1998, Zhang spray-painted more than 2,000 giant profiles of his own bald head on buildings throughout Beijing, placing the images alongside “chai (拆)” characters painted by the city authorities to indicate that a building is scheduled for demolition.