Curatorial
Practice
Film & Performance Night on Feb 8th, 2020
Queering Now: Double Fikret 双面菲克雷特, single-channel video by Wang Haiyang, Image courtesy of the artist, White Space Beijing, and Capsule Shanghai.
Queering Now: Steamed Three Eggs, novel reading by Sin單 Wai慧 Kin乾 (Victoria Sin), Image courtesy of the artist and Greg Goodale
Queering Now: The Parasites of Pangu, opera performed by Ayesha Tan Jones. Image courtesy of the artist and Greg Goodale
︎ Fluid Identities
︎ Live Performances
︎ Collective experiences
"Queering Now was a night jam-packed with bold, avant-garde, and dazzling artwork and performances, all of which were Chinese and queer-related. It was a visual, aural, and multi-sensory extravaganza, mixing artistic genres, styles, and even media forms: from poetry to contemporary art, digital video films to experimental sound pieces, performance art to dystopian opera." - Reviewed by Dr. Hongwei Bao, Queer Asian writer, researcher, and associate professor at the University of Nottingham, UK, who is also the author of Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Activism in Postsocialist China (Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Press, 2018) and Queer China: Lesbian and Gay Literature and Visual Culture under Postsocialism (Routledge, 2020).
Held across three floors at Rich Mix, a dynamic arts center and creative hub in the heart of East London, Queering Now, curated by Whiskey Chow and Sha Li, brought to light marginalized diaspora queer Chinese artists collectively for the first time in London, UK.
Queering Now is a curatorial programme that amplifies the marginalized voices from the Chinese Queer community across diverse social and cultural contexts. Through a range of media and narratives, audiences can engage with expressions of queerness, fluidity, and in-betweenness, delving into the complexities and dissolving boundaries of identity. This explores emotional connections while challenging and questioning traditional notions of gender, sexuality, and identity.
The film programme includes Wang Haiyang's award-winning surreal stop-motion animations "Double Fikret" and "Freud, Fish and Butterfly," Fan Popo's short film "Beer! Beer!", and Andrew Thomas Huang's captivating film "Kiss of the Rabbit God," which is about an extraordinary sexual awakening. Young artists April Lin and Jasmine Lin present a refreshing queer love story called "Reality Fragment 160921" that merges physical and digital worlds.
The live performances feature Whiskey Chow's exploration of power and queer longing in "The Moon is Warmer Than the Sun," followed by Sin單 Wai慧 Kin乾 (formerly Victoria Sin)'s reading that blends speculative fiction and personal histories in "Steamed Three Eggs," and LI YILEI's experimental sound work titled "Your Figures are Muted."
The finale commences with Ayesha Tan Jones, who presents the first act of "Parasites of Pangu," a dystopian opera based on a Chinese creation myth, exploring the world through the eyes of a future archaeologist. The performance is then continued by a post-midnight mass queer dance party with DJ CHOOC LY.
Queering Now was kindly supported by Arts Council England, Live Art UK, and the CAN Festival.
︎ Live Performances
︎ Collective experiences
"Queering Now was a night jam-packed with bold, avant-garde, and dazzling artwork and performances, all of which were Chinese and queer-related. It was a visual, aural, and multi-sensory extravaganza, mixing artistic genres, styles, and even media forms: from poetry to contemporary art, digital video films to experimental sound pieces, performance art to dystopian opera." - Reviewed by Dr. Hongwei Bao, Queer Asian writer, researcher, and associate professor at the University of Nottingham, UK, who is also the author of Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Activism in Postsocialist China (Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Press, 2018) and Queer China: Lesbian and Gay Literature and Visual Culture under Postsocialism (Routledge, 2020).
Held across three floors at Rich Mix, a dynamic arts center and creative hub in the heart of East London, Queering Now, curated by Whiskey Chow and Sha Li, brought to light marginalized diaspora queer Chinese artists collectively for the first time in London, UK.
Queering Now is a curatorial programme that amplifies the marginalized voices from the Chinese Queer community across diverse social and cultural contexts. Through a range of media and narratives, audiences can engage with expressions of queerness, fluidity, and in-betweenness, delving into the complexities and dissolving boundaries of identity. This explores emotional connections while challenging and questioning traditional notions of gender, sexuality, and identity.
The film programme includes Wang Haiyang's award-winning surreal stop-motion animations "Double Fikret" and "Freud, Fish and Butterfly," Fan Popo's short film "Beer! Beer!", and Andrew Thomas Huang's captivating film "Kiss of the Rabbit God," which is about an extraordinary sexual awakening. Young artists April Lin and Jasmine Lin present a refreshing queer love story called "Reality Fragment 160921" that merges physical and digital worlds.
The live performances feature Whiskey Chow's exploration of power and queer longing in "The Moon is Warmer Than the Sun," followed by Sin單 Wai慧 Kin乾 (formerly Victoria Sin)'s reading that blends speculative fiction and personal histories in "Steamed Three Eggs," and LI YILEI's experimental sound work titled "Your Figures are Muted."
The finale commences with Ayesha Tan Jones, who presents the first act of "Parasites of Pangu," a dystopian opera based on a Chinese creation myth, exploring the world through the eyes of a future archaeologist. The performance is then continued by a post-midnight mass queer dance party with DJ CHOOC LY.
Queering Now was kindly supported by Arts Council England, Live Art UK, and the CAN Festival.