To some discerning eyes, the statue is a satire of classical aesthetics that judge beauty by Western standards. But unlike other artists who have used the panda as a prism through which to look at Chinese society, Zhu denies that he implied any political motive or social criticism.
He said his inspiration came from the stark contrast between the preciousness of the panda literally priceless, in that China does not permit the animal to be sold and only lends them to zoos and the prodigious amount of waste they produce. An adult panda defecates about 40 times per day, producing nearly 45 pounds of waste.
The most difficult part was obtaining the raw material. Once convinced that Zhu was legitimate, the reserve allowed his team of students to collect buckets of fresh droppings. Each one was about the size of a goose egg, with sticks of partially digested bamboo poking out. To make it the proper consistency for sculpting, it was mixed with plaster and glue.
Because the pandas eat a mostly vegetarian diet, Zhu said, their droppings did not have a distasteful odor. It smelled more like tea. The Venus de Milo was shown with other panda excrement creations by Zhu and his volunteers at a Chengdu art gallery before moving last month to the Henan Provincial Art Museum in Zhengzhou as part of a larger exhibition exploring the theme of human interactions with pandas.
He also gained some notoriety for a controversial fashion show in which models, dressed entirely in black and white like pandas, portrayed some of the less desirable elements of Chinese society, such as corrupt officials and prostitutes.
