Programme “We Are All the Other”
Where are you from? | Art Residency
Chun Hua Catherine Dong . China /Canada
Chun Hua Catherine Dong was the artist in residency in 2016 (10.07–30.08.2016).
Dong (she/they) is a Chinese-born Tiohtià:ke/ Montréal-based multimedia artist. Dong’s artistic practice is based on performance art, photography, video, VR, AR, and 3D printing within the contemporary context of global feminism. Dong’s work deals mainly with cultural intersections created by globalization and asks what it means to be a citizen of the world today. The body is political.
Lately, Dong has focused on art and technology, exploring new digital possibilities for bridging gaps between memories and experiences, whilst mediating culture and identity through the lens of gender and diaspora. Dong’s work speaks to how gender is explored, lost, created and re-created, and how digital diasporic experiences have shaped the notion of home and self with the rise of digitalization and globalization.
Catheriner’s residency programme had has partners Islington Mill (UK) and The Temporary and was kindly supported by the Canada Council for the Arts (we acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. | Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays)
Public Programme - Performances, Talks, Exhibitions
In the framework of her art residency at the CERA PROJECT, Chun Hua Catherine Dong had a talk and an installation of Yellow Umbrella – An Unfinished Conversation at Islington Mill in Manchester (UK) as part of the Weekly Wednesday Potluck programme, the group exhibition A Very Thin Line, co-curated by Inês Valle and Mafalda Budib at the CERA PROJECT’s space in London, the live performance of The Arrival: Where are you from? and the talk The Transcultural Connection: Performing ‘A New Chineseness’ with the curator Dr Rachel Marsden, on the occasion of the seminar We Are All the Other, Londonn (UK).
Group Exhibition
A Very Thin Line
July 17–August 20, 2016
the CERA PROJECT
Hanbury St, London, United Kingdom
Chun Hua Catherine Dong, When I Was Born (2010), 3:05 mins. video courtesy of the artist.
The group exhibition A Very Thin Line, co-curated by Inês Valle and Mafalda Budib, interrelates a mix of emotions, media and narratives by inviting the audience to experience the very dark and the very bright, as a result of the tension between vulnerability and resistance, love and pain that is constantly whispered in our daily struggles.
For this exhibition, it was shown Dong’s video When I was Born (2010). A work that examines a woman’s multifaceted struggles associated with gender and identity. In this work, a woman tells a story about when she was born, repeating a statement, “When I was born, my father said I was just another mouth to feed.” This statement is a site of resistance and inquiry. It reveals the socio-political implications of patriarchal values embedded in Chinese culture and the lived experience of East-Asian shame culture. In fact, at the time and the place where she was born, being a girl was a mistake and a shame. Through reconfiguring personal memory and bringing the past to the present, the artist not only confronts the pain of the past but also seeks altered states of consciousness that possibly lead to restoring dignity and humanity.
(3:05 mins, produced in Vancouver, Canada)
The Transcultural Connection: Performing ‘A New Chineseness’
Talk
August 13 | 11-12:30AM
the CERA PROJECT
Hanbury St, London, United Kingdom
As part of the programme of the three-days seminar We Are All the Other it was held the conversation The Transcultural Connection: Performing ‘A New Chineseness’ between Chun Hua Catherine Dong and the art curator Dr Rachel Marsden.
Free entry, booking required
Installation & Talk
Yellow Umbrella: An Unfinished Conversation
Co-curated by Inês Valle and Rachel Marsden
August 17 | 6:30PM
Islington Mill
James St, Salford M5, Manchester, United Kingdom
"The Yellow Umbrella—An Unfinished Conversation” is a 90 minutes performance that involves twelve performers engaging with yellow umbrellas. The umbrella is a symbol of protection and resistance. This performance seeks an intersection where aesthetics and politics ignite each other, exploring how symbolic and situational behaviors impact on our perception in regards to specific social movements and activism. It is relevant to open conversations about how to transform social and political landscapes through embodied gestures, examining relationships between the citizens and the place they live, between what they have lost and what they have gained in social-political transformations.
Part of the Weekly Wednesday Potlucks we presented in collaboration with Islington Mill the installation Yellow Umbrella–An Unfinished Conversation followed by a Talk between Chun Hua Catherine Dong and the art curators Inês Valle and Dr Rachel Marsden.
Free entry, booking required
The Arrival: Where are you from?
the CERA PROJECT
Hanbury St, London, United Kingdom
August 19 | 6:15 PM
Dong’s residency culminated with the premier of her participatory live performance The Arrival: Where Are You From?
“The Arrival — Where Are You From?” is a participatory research-based performance that examines identity, place, and belonging through languages and gestures. During 30 minutes we hear the voices of 156 people, who Dong approached and recorded in the streets of London or that sent to her their voices, together unveiling tones and emotion while it was asked: “Where are you from?”.
“The Arrival” seeks cultural intersections created by experiences of immigration and globalisation, examining how transnational interconnections impact and shape our identity, questioning what it means to be a citizen of the world today, and how we all relate to each other in the rapidly changing world.
The final project was first presented at The CERA Project in London, where she used recorded sound, salt, and paper boats to respond to her research.
Free entry, booking required