The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York held a press conference today to announce its participation at the Performa 19 Biennial and Taiwan will be one of the two theme nations alongside Sweden to be featured in the Pavilions Without Walls program. Performa, the internationally acclaimed organization dedicated to live performance by visual artists, is thrilled to announce additional Commissions and the Pavilions Without Wallsprogram for the Performa 19 Biennial. The eighth edition of the biennial presents more than twenty new commissions by artists from over a dozen countries around the world to participate in three weeks of exciting programming, from November 1–24, 2019, at locations throughout New York City.
Launched in 2013, Performa’s renowned Pavilions Without Walls program showcases vibrant artistic practices from Taiwan and Sweden, following extensive research and engagement with curators, historians, artists, and educators in those countries. The Pavilions aim to reflect the social, geographical and political landscapes of each country, and to present the work of emerging and established artists to the New York arts community and public at large.
For the Taiwanese Pavilion, conceptual and installation artist Chou Yu-Cheng (b. 1976, Taiwan, lives in Taipei) will explore systems of labor, exchange and trade in New York’s Financial District, by tracking the movements of distributed goods such as whole wheat.In his first live theatrical work, artist and film director Su Hui-Yu (b. 1976, Taiwan, lives in Taipei) will survey the life of Tian Qiyuan, Taiwan’s first openly gay and HIV-positive student and co-founder of the experimental 1980’s Taiwanese theater group Critical Point Theatre Phenomenon, by re-inventing Tian’s influential production White Snake, originally inspired by a classic Ming Dynasty legend. Video artist Yu Cheng-Ta (b. 1983, Taiwan, lives in Taipei) will examine the phenomenon of social media celebrity via a series of staged interventions—both online and in real life—working with influencers to consider cultural stereotypes. Illuminating the lived experiences of Asian immigrants in New York,Huang Po-Chih (b. 1980, Taiwan, lives in Taipei), whose complex conceptual works challenge industry status quo, will arrange an elegy for Song Yang, a Chinese immigrant sex worker who committed suicide in Flushing, Queens in 2017. Technological pioneer Shu Lea Cheang (b.1954, Taiwan, lives in Paris), who represents Taiwan at the current Venice Biennale, will present SLEEP1237, during which participants will be read to sleep, following a screening and public discussion of her early innovative work.
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