Still Life

30 Minutes Public Live Performance

2 Umbrellas

Suzhou Bay Cultural Center

Suzhou. China

2022

Still Life is a site-specific performance originally performed live. Responding to the theme of the group exhibition “The New World” - Departure’ and to the contemporary conditions that informed the work, it was created for the Suzhou Bay Cultural Centre, a building designed by French architect Christian de Portzamparc. Performed just over a week after China’s 7 December 2022 lifting of strict public-health and social restrictions, and in the days before the Chinese Winter Solstice, the work responds to a period in which daily life had been made still.

The artist begins concealed within a pair of silver umbrellas — objects of protection and shelter whose mirrored surfaces deliberately echo the Centre’s interior and architectural features. Inside the umbrellas’ vibrant yellow membrane, the body forms a kind of seed within a shell. From this self-made confinement, the artist gradually emerges. Her movements are minimal, poised, and slow: a body unfolding, sprouting, growing by degrees. The performance moves from the condition of a still-life sculpture to the fragile but elemental force of living growth.

Presented at the opening of “The New World” Art Exhibition, organized by BFM Art Centre, with curatorial support from Avy Yang and Alex Chen