Kim Jones began his career in Los Angeles in the mid-1960s as a performance artist, and became primarily known for his alter ego, Mudman—a shaman-like itinerant caked in mud and other organic substances who appeared on city streets, subways, galleries, and museums wearing a cumbersome lattice structure of sticks on his back.
Influenced by alternative lifestyles and non-Western religious practices and cultures, Jones, along with peers such as Chris Burden, Suzanne Lacy, Paul McCarthy, and Barbara T. Smith, enacted body-based performances that commented on a wide range of topical issues, including the war, violence against women, civil rights, and sexual liberation.
He continued to appear in urban areas and galleries wearing a sculptural headdress and burdened by a lattice structure of sticks on his back, presenting a formidable sight that has invited comparisons to the homeless, camouflaged soldiers, peasants, or any number of mystic figures found in religions worldwide.
Art historian Marcia Tucker described Mudman as "a shamanistic figure, performing solitary, primitive rituals in a time and place not his own, but belonging to other cultures and other lands.
During this notorious onstage piece, Jones (as Mudman) unveiled a wire cage holding three live rats, which he doused with lighter fluid and set on fire.