Lot
23
I Have Been There
Photographie de performance, 2018
72 x 90 cm
1/5 + 1 E.A.
Valeur estimée
3 150 $
I Have Been There est une performance en continu, qui consiste à fabriquer une couette dans chaque endroit que je visite. Recouverte de la couette, je m’étends par terre, immobile, sur le sol de lieux ou de repères historiques et d’attractions touristiques, signalant ainsi ma volonté de compromis et d’engagement envers les cultures et les lieux. Cette œuvre s’inspire d’une tradition funéraire qui a cours dans ma ville natale, en Chine. Quand une personne âgée décède, ses filles fabriquent des couettes en soie qui servent de linceuls pour couvrir le corps du parent défunt. Pour moi, qui vit seule à l’étranger, la question de savoir qui va m’enterrer quand je serai morte est préoccupante. C’est pourquoi je couds mes propres linceuls et m’enterre moi-même partout où je vais, célébrant ainsi ma mort – ou, en d’autres mots, mon existence –, publiquement et à répétition.
Notice biographique
Chun Hua Catherine Dong is a Chinese-born Montréal-based artist working with performance, photography, and video. Working within the gap between body as image and body as experienced reality, Dong uses the body—often her own body—as a visual territory and a primary material in her work to activate social commentary on gender, race, and immigration. By encapsulating these global issues in microcosm or magnifying personal predicaments until they become universally visible, she presents the body as an embodiment of dynamic human relations, locating herself at the nexus of author, artwork, and audience.
Dong received a BFA from Emily Carr University Art & Design and an MFA from Concordia University. She has performed and exhibited her works in multiple international festivals and venues, including Québec City Biennial, Kaunas Biennial, the Musée d’art contemporain du Val-de-Marne (Paris), Dong Gang Museum of Photography (South Korea), Grace Exhibition Space (Brooklyn), Rapid Pulse International Performance Art Festival (Chicago), and 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art (Toronto). She received the Franklin Furnace Award for contemporary avant-garde art in New York (2014), and was named among the “10 Artists Who Are Reinventing History” by Canadian Art (2017), and “Top Nine Political Art Projects of 2010” by Art and Threat magazine.