Longing for harmonies (part 1)

2022

performance installation

duration 30 mins. 

Longing for harmonies is a performance-installation of many parts, and of many pieces, which don’t sit too comfortably on walls. A radio, wedding dress, hazmat suit, paper parasol, ghost money, wooden beads, needle, eggshells, an Áo dài (a traditional Vietnamese dress). These are the artist’s symbolic protagonists, each of which are beholden to a strange, meditative ritual that is engulfed in an incongruous collage of sound. This is a ritual that seeks out the radical possibilities of unexpected juxtaposition, which, can confound everyday logic and, in turn, reveal to us something of our personal and collective unconscious. This is a ritual that makes public an array of private questions—of maternity, migration, culture and history. They are questions that, for both artist and audience, may at times give rise to rumination; at others, they may agitate, provoke and confuse. To catch sight of another soul, and to let a piece of its texture touch our own, we may need to yield, for a moment, to the dizzying grip of vertigo—and, in turn, become alive to the revelations of chance encounters.

photography by Jeff Cravotta

April 28, 2022

Mixed Blessing opening reception, Elder Gallery of Contemporary Art

photos by Peter Zay

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