Ren Hang: Bound

The bodies in Ren Hang’s photographs don’t perform. They exist in a kind of vulnerable refusal, stripped down and exposed in landscapes that offered no shelter for that vulnerability. There’s a defiance in the work—not the performative kind, but the kind that comes from looking straight at what everyone else looks away from. His photographs were erotic without trying to seduce you, intimate without trying to comfort you. They were a refusal to hide, in a place where hiding was the safest option.