photo by Dayna Danger, performed by Wing Sze Tsang-Hy, Peter Meritzis; Bodypainting by Yandel; photo of installation review by Hua Jin
Posts Tagged ‘Chinese Culture’
The Emperor’s New Diaper
Posted in performance art, tagged body, Chinese Culture, family, identity, immigration, marriage, multiculturalism, performance art, politics, red baby diaper on March 30, 2013 |
The Husbands and I–performance+installation
Posted in performance art, tagged body, Chinese Culture, feminism, humanity, husbands, identity politics, immigration, intimacy, love, marriage, performance art, politics, postcolonialism, power, relationship, sexuality, Vancouver, white males on May 27, 2012 |
performance: 50 hours, May 17-June 2, 2012, in The Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery
installation: video, digital prints, curtains, photo albums, bed, side tables, lamps and body
video: Sarah Hudson, Maksim Bentsianov, Karlo Meglarejo, Jerry Tai
photo: Ruth Skinner, Chad Durnford, Denise Gaudreault, Bernie Lee
Everywhere and All at once
Posted in performance art, tagged Chinese Culture, gender, identity, mahjong, video installation on November 6, 2011 |
Pacific National Exhibition, Vancovuer, 2010
“Everywhere and All at Once” is a loop video projected on a 3’ x 4’ table. This video reveals four people, two males and two females, all wearing red nail polish and playing mahjong. The viewers are encouraged to sit on the chairs to experience the installation.
In this video installation, I am trying to blur gender boundaries through providing a communicating environment for viewers to experience new roles both in virtual and reality in a playful way. Because the viewers are encouraged to engage this piece by sitting on the chairs, they become extensions of this installation and the game players as well. However, the viewers might pause for a moment to think about which chairs they supposed to sit, which chairs they belong to, or which players they want to be. Nevertheless, no matter the viewers are males or females, (or perhaps we all have a little male or female inside), they all ultimately unite into the players in the video and become one.
Rice Performance Series–Another Witness
Posted in performance art, tagged body, Chinese Culture, identity, immigration, performance art, rice, Vancouver on August 23, 2011 |
photo by Bitshere, at Nomad Art Gallery
i carry a bag with rice, walking in a gallery and approaching an audience to have a conversation. when the conversation starts, the rice leaks from my bag. when the conversation is over, the rice stops leaking. And then i move to another audience, the action repeats.
Rice Performance Series- The Invalid Testimony
Posted in performance art, tagged body, Chinese Culture, feminism, gender, humanity, identity, identity politics, immigration, intimacy, love, minority, performance art, politics, postcolonialism, power, rice, sexuality, Vancouver on June 10, 2011 |
performed at SPREAD openning at Chapel Arts, June 3, 2011
duration: one and half an hour
photo by Chad Durnford
I stand against a white wall in a gallery space. There are two bags of rice with a description on the floor right in front of me. Audiences are encouraged to shoot my naked body with rice outside of yellow tape. This action will be repeated until the rice is gone.
After living inCanada for eight year, I realized that there is urgency for me to renew my lost tradition and culture. In the early 2010, I started to use rice to create a series of performances to explore oppositions as manifestations of fundamental existential concern in Chinese philosophy. “The Invalid Testimony” is the fifth one in the rice performance series. This series is not only a ritual meditation, but also an opening conversation, examining relationships between me and the place I live, between what I have lost and what I have gained as a racial minority. However, in “The Invalid Testimony,” I turn the ritual to a battle. The rice that has nurtured me in my whole life becomes a weapon to against myself. It seems that the only way I regain what I have lost is through surrender.
Looking for a White Husband
Posted in performance art, tagged Chinese Culture, Chinese dress, experimental film, feminism, gender, humanity, identity, immigration, intimacy, love, minority, performance art, politics, power, relationship, sexuality, Vancouver, white males on January 8, 2011 |
I am an exotic, compliant and artistic
Asian girl, looking for A WHITE HUSBAND
who would like to take me to his home
and live with him for a day as his mail order bride.
if you think it would be an interesting experience,
please contact me at
artistintheworld@hotmail.com
photo by Bernie Lee
The Husbands I Have Lived for A Day
Posted in performance art, tagged Chinese Culture, Chinese dress, experimental film, feminism, gender, humanity, husband, husbands, identity, immigration, intimacy, love, marriage, minority, performance art, politics, relationship, sexuality, white males on October 26, 2010 |
Sanford (Biff) Bartlett, December 19, 2010
Jeff Ferguson, March 11, 2011
Michael Barry Anderson, January 13, 2011
Toni Latour, November 7, 2010 
Ruben Castelanco, October 10, 2010 
Stephen DesRoches, October 23, 2010 
Gordon Scott, November 20, 2010
Brendan, Feburary 27, 2011
Charles K., March 6, 2011
Gary .D, December 5, 2010
video is available upon request
video by Sarah Hudson, Maksim Bentsianov, Karlo Melgarejo, Jerry Tai
The Husbands and I- part I (2010)
Posted in performance art, tagged Chinese Culture, Chinese dress, feminism, gender, humanity, husbands, identity, immigration, interactive technology, intimacy, love, marriage, minority, multiculturalism, performance art, politics, power, relationship, sexuality, Vancouver, white males on June 25, 2010 |
photo by Ruth Skinner
from a 352 husband collection
I wear my Chinese traditional dress, walking on streets and asking white males to have photo taken with me by suggesting them to act as my husband– to explore intimacy between two strangers in public space. immigrated to Canada couple of years ago, and i regard the whole process of immigration as a marriage, and myself like a mail order bride. I married Canada, suddenly transforming myself from a Chinese to a Canadian or a Chinese Canada. My identity is not constructed by Canadian history, culture or its landscape, but the white males who are around me.
The physical encounter between me and the white males actually is an ideological confrontation between me and the Western social and political landscape that I feel I don’t belong to. By exploring intimacy with them, I try to not only reconfigure the established centered power that the privileged white males embody, but also question whether the culturally interpreted Chinese female body, both as a foreign subject and object, can be invested and exploited.
Rice Performance Series–The Other Words
Posted in performance art, tagged aesthetics, Chinese Culture, language, performance art, power, relationship, rice, translation, white males on June 7, 2010 |
photo by James Zhang
four hours at Western Front Gallery
I set a table and two chairs in a gallery space. I sit on a chair, and a male mannequin in front of me. There is a big bowl of cooked rice on the table, I use a spoon to scoop rice, put it into my month, and slowly chew it until it becomes soft and warm. And then I carefully transfer the rice from my month to the spoon, and feed it to the male mannequin’s mouth. This process is continually repeated until the rice on the bowl is thoroughly transferred.
This performance refers that the sense of authenticity, integrity and beauty of resource language get lost in translation. In fact, the process of translation is like chewing up rice and feeding it to people. In performance, what I feed to the mannequin is still rice. However, this transformed rice has already lost its flavor and nutrition. It is the same in translation, clarity and fluency of source text might still be kept in a target text. However, the source text and the target text can never be the same because fidelity in translation is the root which tranlators strive to approach but it can never truly be reached.
Rice Performance Series–Hourglass
Posted in performance art, tagged aesthetics, Chinese Culture, culture, humanity, identity, immigration, interactive technology, painting, performance art, postcolonialism, power, rice, Vancouver on May 21, 2010 |
photo and Video by Jame Zhang
perform at Visualieyez 2010 Performance Festival at Latitude 53 and 221 A Artist Run Centre
I set two 14 inch bowls, two pairs of small brushes, and tweezers on a table. I begin painting white rice with black ink one by one until one day the black rice equals the white rice. The audiences are invited to work together.
“Hourglass” is a rice-based performance that explores “deterritorialization” and “disessentialization” in the Taken-for-Granted world. The action of constantly painting white rice to black is a metaphor of hourglass. Sand in hourglass cannot flow without rotation as if power cannot shift without struggle. Too much power is concentrated on one side seems to be a main factor causing disharmony, confusion and dislocation, which embody on the social turbulence that we see and feel in our daily lives. In fact, power doesn’t bring growth unless we understand the essence of sharing the power. However, our established binary system, the concept of centre and margin, the majority and minority, and the dominated and dominating, still divides us in democratic multicultural societies. Too much power is concentrated on “the centre”, “the majority” or “the dominating” seems to be a main factor causing disharmony and dislocation.
The gesture of painting white rice to black is a political gesture. It reveals my desire to not only negotiate and transform everyday political life to art, but also install a model for social transformation that possibly could create a new way to look at utopia. For me, process of social transformation does not have to involve violence, and the political gesture doesn’t have to be radical. In fact, it can be done through a more peaceful way, a meditative way or meditation. This performance provides an opportunity for participants to meditate our situation whiling working together on a mutual goal: reconfigure the established centralized power in order to create an equal, fair and balanced world.
After living inCanada for nine year, I realized that there is urgency for me to renew my lost tradition and culture. In the early 2010, I started to use rice to create a series of performances to explore oppositions as manifestations of fundamental existential concern in Chinese philosophy. “Hourglass” is the fourth one in the rice performance series. This series is not only a ritual meditation, but also an opening conversation, examining relationships between me and the place I live, between what I have lost and what I have gained as a so called racial minority.
A scientist did a math, there are about 333,000ps grains in the bowl, it takes 20 seconds to paint a grain. As a result, if two people together paint 24 hours/ day, it needs 500 hours to paint half amount of white rice to black.
Hourglass Firgure
