b i o g r a p h y

WeiZen has been devising and presenting performances since 1999. Her practice has expanded from music-visual concerts, to solo and participatory works that occupy spaces of uncertainty between performance, ritual and installation; which employ accoutrements and deep imagery to coalesce the psycho-emotional and philosophical relationships, between body, voice, sound and site. She investigates methods for accessing the memory-body through vocal-bodywork, improvisational techniques and re-imagined psycho-physical states of spirit possession rituals she has witnessed as part of her ongoing research process; perceiving that the potency these rituals hold can expand our perspective and insight, needed for social transformation and empowerment.

Since founding music group TUFA, performing across Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Beijing (1999-2004), WeiZen has presented Purge II in September 2024 as part of a Willoughby City Council curated group exhibition called UNBROKEN GESTURES. Purge II was a commissioned sculptural installation examining cultural hunger and durational symbolic actions, generated and modified in two durational public performances, using the materials butterfly pea flowers, turmeric root, cooked glutinous black rice, bamboo straws, handmade paper by WeiZen and Primrose Paper Arts, blotting paper, wooden frame, glass jars and bottles.

In August 2024, as part of HAND UNMADE, she presented the subtle beings - emergence, a vocal, movement and installation performance using pig skin embedded with synthetic horse hair, where she re-imagines a Rungus dance ritual from Kampung Minyak, Sabah in Malaysian Borneo.  WeiZen undertook a Rotterdam research residency in June 2024, exploring the framework of Being and Place by inviting local residents through 'Walk with me, Rotterdam', for Performance Art Event (PAE). This culminated in an ensemble improvisational event with the walker-participants.

Adapting Stories from the Body (SFTB) #1 into a participatory work, WeiZen utilised the public space surrounding the Maman sculpture, and the North Wing site, for the opening and closing programme for the Louise Bourgeois’ exhibition at the Art Gallery NSW in 2023 and 2024.  She and Ryuichi Fujimura also co-devised a 3-hour performance titled Pink Regenesis of the Curse, for the lower grounds of White Bay Power Station, at the EDGE Inner West, 24th Biennale of Sydney (2024). 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art commissioned a performance-installation titled Amulet Body as part of a 7-week group exhibition, which included two participatory ritual performances in the gallery, and weekly divination performance sessions for passersby on the streets of Haymarket, Sydney’s Chinatown.

Other works include: Sounds Like Divination I, II, III, and other material/object-body performance interventions in Manhattan public sites as part of Immersive, New York Live Art Tour 8; Evaporative Body, Multiplying Body with Alan Schacher for Keir Choreographic Award (2022); Stories from the Body #1-#10 was performed from 2014-2023 in Indonesia, Malaysia, Setouchi Triennale in Japan, Thailand, and in Australia for SOFT CENTRE Unfurl, Sydney Contemporary, Blue Mountains City Art Gallery, Cementa Turns 10 and Carriageworks Nights CONSENT; the subtle beings (Australia 2018) with research undertaken in Sabah and Hanoi, and The Invisibles (360VR film 2020). WeiZen was an AIR in Cementa Festival 2022 to present a social-installation work, Dying - Differently, Possibly. She is also an artist-curator for cross-disciplinary performance events and residency concepts like SoundBitesBody (2012-2016: properties throughout the Blue Mountains), and Performature : Performateur #1, #2, #3, #4 (2019-2022: Articulate project space, Splinter festival, StSt.ari, 4a Centre for Contemporary Asian Art).

g e n e r a l p r a c t i c e

“I draw inspiration from the premise that human living is performed and performative; to activate this process through the vocal-body and its memory, contextualised within its geocultural history.  As an open-disciplinary performance deviser and vocalist since 1999, I expanded into the practice of spatial-body relationship through choreography, via BodyWeather and Pancha Tanmantra 5 Element principles.  In 2010, I began formalising a spirit-corporeal vocabulary generated through contemplation on mortality.  Building a line of inquiry through research residencies and witnessing of rituals, whilst devising for locations across Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan and Thailand, I secured a research grant which led me to female shamanry communities in Sabah (Malaysia) and Hanoi (Vietnam).  This culminated in a 2018 participatory performance-installation, t h e s u b t l e b e i n g s. Increasingly, I include participatory and/or material installation to capture the traces, the aftermath of a performance.”