In 1995, on a widened street alongside the construction site of Guangzhou's soon-to-be tallest skyscraper, a nondescript man moves a wall of stacked breezeblocks across the street, methodically stacking and unstacking each one by one amidst oncoming vehicular traffic. This performance, Safely Maneuvering Across Lin He Road, by the artist Lin Yilin (林一林, b. 1964), a member of the Guangzhou-based Big Tail Elephant Working Group (大 尾象工作组), would later be noted in various art historical accounts as illustrative of Chinese contemporary artists’ new interest in the country's rapid urbanization during the 1990s. Indeed the piece engages with the urban environment in highly specific ways. The artist chose to locate the work on the street abutting the CITIC Plaza construction site in the rapidly developing new district of Tianhe (Heavenly River) in Guangzhou, China. The breezeblocks Lin used are taken from the site and therefore intimately connected to the material realities of the destruction and reconstruction of the city. Lin's performance, a form of bodily engagement with the physical environment, registers an exchange between the artist's body and the urban site that can be understood in literal terms as an art work.

This piece is representative of the thematic concerns and strategies of Big Tail Elephant, comprised of artists Lin Yilin, Chen Shaoxiong (陈劭雄, 1962-2016), Liang Juhui (梁钜辉, 1959-2006), and Xu Tan (徐坦, b. 1957).