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
Posted in performance art, tagged body, gender, humanity, performance art on April 7, 2012 |
two hours at Ancienne Ecole Des Beaux-Arts, Montreal, March 23, 2012
photo by: David Romero, Video by: Pirouz Nemati, Edit by: Zohar Melinek
performers: Alida Esmail, Karoline Lebrun, Emily Schon, Kendall Savage, Eliane Abdellahi, Paula Duffy, Danielle Doiron, Emilia Gallo, Janaki Banting, Elisabeth Racine, Anna Mayberry, Zoe Roux, Emilie L-Choquette, Alexandra Cote, Allie Blumas, Maude Thibault Morin, Claire Evans, Lili Monette-Crepo, Alexandra Cote, Katrina B, and who those i unable to name.
Sixteen females wear red mouthpieces and white bath towels, standing in a row and facing the same direction. They repeat three still gestures: standing, kneeing, and lying on the floor. The performers hold each gesture for five minutes and then move to another gesture.
The gestures in the performance are inspired by gargoyle, a legendary stone-carved grotesque with a spout that normally is designed to convey water from a roof. Mouth serves as the opening for food intake and in the articulation of sound and speech. However, when performers wear the mouthpieces, or when women’s mouth is forced to open, the mouth loses its function. In fact, it silences and disables the women because they are unable to talk when their mouths are widely pulled open. This performance explores another side of the unseen and unspoken—the vulnerability, struggle, shame, and suffering that we are uneasy to share and expose while examining multifaceted struggles of a woman associated with identity, gender, and sexuality in order to reveal the struggle and conflict rooted in oppressed individuals and groups.
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.
Posted in performance art, tagged aesthetics, body, clinic detachment, feminism, humanity, intimacy, love, marriage, medical body, performance art, politics, postcolonialism, power, relationship, sexuality, Vancouver, white males on February 22, 2011 |
photo by Hua Jin
duration: three hours
I ask my performance partner lying on a medical bed and use my tip tongue touching his whole body inch by inch.
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
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
Posted in performance art, tagged culture, feminism, gender, humanity, husbands, identity, immigration, intimacy, marriage, minority, multiculturalism, performance art, politics, relationship, sexuality, Vancouver, white males on September 11, 2010 |
Visualieyez 2010 Performance Festival, Jubilee Audition, Edmonton, Alberta. september 18, 2010. video by Heather Challoner.
I approach a man with a rose, asking him if I can ask him a question. If he agrees, I say “will you marry me?” right in front of his ear with very soft tone. After he says yes, I pin the rose on his chest, and offer myself to him for two minutes.
At Jubilee Audition in Edmonton on September 18th, 2010, I proposed to twenty-eight men in three hours. Three men rejected me; eight men accepted my proposal immediately; the rest of them were ultimately convinced after a longer or shorter explanation.
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.
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
Posted in performance art, tagged anti-racism, Chinese Culture, culture, humanity, identity, immigration, minority, multiculturalism, performance art, politics, postcolonialism, power, rice, Ying and Yang on May 21, 2010 |
photo and video by James Zhang
performed at PAct 4: Trade opening at Vancouver International Centre for contemporary Asian Art and Pacific Cinematheque, 2010
I demonstrate a process of selecting rice. I use a sieve to screen out the small ones, picke out those imperfections, and keep the regular ones that fit perfectly.
