Opening and Performance: The Body as Archive (2018) by Lee Wen

Opening and Performance: The Body as Archive (2018) by Lee Wen

Accompanying the opening of Journey of a Yellow Man. Selected Materials from the Independent Archive is a performance-installation titled The Body as Archive (2018) by Lee Wen. A red dress—a relic of past performances—is cast in ice and stands in the waning afternoon light as a silent witness.

The red dress is a recurring motif in Lee Wen’s works, beginning in 2013 with a performance titled The Call of the Red in which he slips into a red dress and wig, morphing into his mother and expressing her longing for her long-gone husband; a story of love, expectations, longings, patience, and resilience. The motif appears again in his text Return to Daydreams (2013), in which the dress stands as a memory, frozen in time, of an event that gathers people together in the name of brotherhood and equality:

“We were trans-activators and we dressed like one, in a silk red dress. And we agreed that one of these red dresses would be cast in ice to stand throughout the trans-activation. We were ready, we did not fail, and they did not kill us. It was a great dance of trans-activity. Only I had failed to go where they went. Cause the red dress in the ice block. It was mine I remember is now… 1989.”

Journey of a Yellow Man. Selected Materials from the Independent Archive is on view in The Lab from 15 September to 25 November 2018.

2018-09-15

Accompanying the opening of Journey of a Yellow Man. Selected Materials from the Independent Archive is a performance-installation titled The Body as Archive (2018) by Lee Wen.

General

Onsite (CCA)

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