Purge (Research), April 2023, photograph of research process at Blue Mountains home. Image courtesy the artist.
ABOUT THE WORK
There is something that we deeply hunger for when we live outside our own culture. We yearn to speak in our own tongue, and often push aside social etiquette when we do encounter someone who is conversant in it. The most common transference of this ‘cultural hunger’ is by way of food. It is this image that WeiZen attempts to convey and expand upon, in her enactment, through introspective and embodied ontological exploration.
Purge, September 2023, photograph of public performance at Grace Exhibition Space, Manhattan, as part of New York Live Art Tour 8, Immersive. Photo above by Beate Linne.
Purge II will be an open performance process which eventually takes on a participatory mode. This act of masticating a higher-than-normal quantity of food ingredients used in recipes from her home environment is akin to excavating her cultural memory body . The materials employed are turmeric root, butterfly pea flowers, cooked glutinous black rice, blotting papers, dowels, glass bottles and jars.
When a simple symbolic action is formalised, and repeated (continuously) over a sufficient duration, it can subtly transform the atmosphere and image, shifting its meaning-making, re-framing it and the surrounding space into something else. Accompanied by an altered consciousness in the performer, it affects the witnesses to the energetic changes, and a dynamic oscillation begins to take place. This phenomenon can facilitate the experience of deep emotions and insights, which are often ineffable, requiring the suspension of our usual assumptions regarding things.
Purge II
Art Space on The Concourse in Chatswood
Saturday 7 September 2024, 12-3pm
(best by public transport due to street festival)
Saturday 14 September 2024, 12-3pm
A Willoughby City Council curated exhibition, co-curated by Cassandra Hard Lawrie and Faye Chen.