Shifting Performativity and Politics in China
Shifting Performativity and Politics in China : Tao Hui, Chen Wei, Wang Tuo, and Yao Qingmei interviewed by Leo Li Chen In this video series, four artists who engage with the themes of performativity and politics discuss their recent works with curator Leo Li Chen. From new media to performance, their practices each reveal the precarious realities in China to rethink the complexities of identity, history, and everyday life. Shifting Performativity and Politics in China : Tao Hui, Chen Wei, Wang Tuo, and Yao Qingmei interviewed and produced by Leo Li Chen in 2022 for KADIST. Tao Hui (b. 1987 Chongqing. Lives and works in Beijing) creates immersive video installations that bend the boundaries of fiction and reality to address cultural and identity-related issues. Chen Wei (b. 1980, Zhejiang Province. Lives and works in Beijing) staged photographs, at once idealistic and ominous, negotiate the symbolist tropes put forward by the medium of photography. Wang Tuo (b. 1984, Changchun. Lives and works in Beijing) interweaves disparate realities from archives, modern history, myth, and literature through film, performance, painting, and drawing to examine modern Chinese history. Yao Qingmei ’s (b. 1982, Zhejiang. Lives and works in Wenzhou and Paris) practice traverses the boundary between performance and its site, frequently enacting intervention in public space to perturb the parameters of its reality and surroundings. Leo Li Chen is an independent curator and researcher based in Beijing, China. He was the Director of Research in Magician Space, Beijing, and an independent curator in Hong Kong and mainland China. His main research focuses on geopolitics, performativity, and moving images, to explore the complexity of identity and subjectivity that transcends geographical barriers.