artistbody

My Performative Body

Artist Talk at Sotheby’s Institute of Art

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Calligraphy On Skin

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Cut Piece 2022

The Outfits ?

I choose to wear white because it’s world peace sentiment and most importantly I was imaging as the performance goes, the energy and the shift of missing piece creates abstract clouds just like the exhibition title: This room moves at the same speed as the clouds. I wanted to in-body the cloud. ☁️

My outfit was combined with newly bought items: tights, underwear and jacket and my own loved designer clothes: shirt, skirts and shoes but this time I made a decision not to wear European Union heritage brands. I didn’t want to have the concept of “cutting” related to them because of the Russian-Ukraine war and Brexit. Still I wanted to offer my best outfit also most recognisable classic brands that has their own social identity and global expansion and influence. Here are some of my thinkings:

Jacket: Ralph Lauren ( one of the oldest American luxury brand based in New York, many people would considered it as the icon of American/Western lifestyle.) 

Shirt: Vivienne Westwood, UK brand ( “The mother of punk” Vivienne Westwood is also an Eco fashion campaigner, social injustice activist, consumerism ideologist. ) 

Skirt: Alexander McQueen, UK brand: ( This was a vintage piece designed by Lee McQueen himself, who has a vision to “create armor for women”. To wear that to cover my bottom because both myself and Lee has experienced abuse from childhood. ) for me, Lee’s proud queer identity, HIV positive status, drugs use and tragic suicide makes him one of the most complex icon of our time. 

Underwear: Calvin Klein ( one of the most iconic cultural symbol of body and branding. In 2020, Calvin Klein made a statement to cut ties with any factories or mills that produce fabric or use cotton from Xinjiang by 2021 due to human rights Al campaigners say, the cotton are produced by Xinjiang’s Uighur minority forced labour. ) 

Tights: Wolford ( This was the only European brand I used for it’s second skin feel and intimate last protection concept ) 

Shoes: Manolo Blahniks: ( It’s a pair of very classic heel. Many used as symbol of modern femininity, often used as feminist statement in  soap opera such as: Sex and The City. 

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Body of Work

Body of Work

Interview by Jing Zhang

Published on Aug of 2019 Prestige Magazine

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PAINTING UNTIL IT BECOMES MARBLE

XIE RONG PERFORMS YOKO ONO’S PAINTING UNTIL IT BECOMES MARBLE

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Stone and Light

 

XIE RONG – STONE AND LIGHT

Xie Rong performs her new works:

Story of the Stone/ To Reach the Light

(inspired by Yoko Ono) 

at Yoko Ono: Peace Is Power exhibition @mdbkleipzig in Leipzig Germany

May 11, 2019.

Watch the performance videos:

 

Story of the Stone

This work by Xie Rong is inspired by three of Yoko Ono’s works; Three Mounds, Riverbed and Rising (lyrics).

“

Xie Rong: “I wish to create a piece to bring illumination and sound into the darkness. To connect all the rooms into the main hall, create movement of audiences. From 9:30 Andreas played music create tension and atmosphere. 10pm, Me, in a mirror suit, walking into the main hall. I stood inside a rope light, silent, I will sing “Olive Tree” then I walk off to collect all the ropes, I shout out to each floor and balcony, drag ropes between people. Creating spider web collection between the three museum floors and four exhibition rooms.” … …

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My Cut Piece

Cut piece ✂️

Last night, I performed my “One Woman Show”. It is a title that borrowed from Yoko Ono’s MoMA’s exhibition in 2015. It was my 5th performance piece that responded to Yoko’s work.
This morning, tiredly woke up from sore muscles. I watched the video of Theresa May’s resign speech. Her usually steely demeanour collapsed, her voice cracking with emotion, she said:” The second female prime minister but certainly not the last. I do so with no ill-will, but with enormous and enduring gratitude to have had the opportunity to serve the country I love.” Suddenly, it reminded me of the aloneness and vulnerability I experienced before, during and after the “Cut Piece”. It’s a historical piece, I had exception and preparation for it. But it was still very challenging for me and the audiences.

1.The stage was high, because there were hundreds of audiences.

2.I was programmed into an opening timeline which the mayor and museum director were waiting to give a speech.

3.A daughter came with her mother,shaking, her mother encouraged :” Do it! Do it!” she cut small piece of my shirt “yes!” Her mother shouted loudly with proud!

4.A man walked up brutally took my bra and swung in the air! Whole room cheered!

5. As soon as my bra was off, two women jumped in front the queue. Quickly, collaboratively, tightly, they swaddled me together like a new born baby.

6. A woman gently removed my underpants, Later watching the footage I realised she was sobbing.

7. An elder woman ran close to the stage after my underpants was removed. She stood apart her legs, lifted up her long skirt, cut a small piece of fabric, she faced the audiences, like a warrior. She turned around and covered my crotch. She then held her both hands bowed me like a Buddha.

8. The second day, she waited for me in the museum and wanted to check if I was ok, she never heard about the original Cut piece so she was deeply sadden and dramatised by the action and process.

9. Dinner, one of curator call me the best actress, others angry:” You shouldn’t be allowed to cut your own hair to end the show! Because it’s Yoko’s work !

10. The sound was a sculpture and movement was a drawing!

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Art China_Interview_by Meng Yuan

Xie Rong x Echo Morgan – After her divorce in the UK, a petite Sichuan girl started her five-years performance art journey.

Art China · Meng Yuan | 2016-11-03 17:20

The first “Beijing·Live” International Performance Art Festival was held from October 15th to 23rd, 2016. More than 30 performance artists from 13 countries presented performance art works at the Danish Cultural Center. Echo Morgan performed her new work, My Father and My Son. The Art China reporter interviewed the artist Xie Rong and had a new understanding of her behavior.

1. You were a designer at the beginning. What is the opportunity for you to switch to behavioral art creation?

Yes, I was in college at the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. I belonged to the University of the Arts in London. When I was in school, I found that the boundaries between design and art were very vague. The graduation thesis at the time was influenced by Hélène Cixous’s theory of “negative writing”. In the book “Medusa’s Laughter,” she wrote: “Women must write about herself: must write a woman and bring a woman to writing… a woman must put herself in the text – bring her story back In the world and in history – through her own actions.”

My graduation thesis is “The Symbol of Negative Writing and Identity”, and I wrote an autobiography “Xie Rong and the Thirsty Devil”. In the autobiography, I combed my family history into the “three steps”: the root of the school, the school of death and the school of dreams. This is a turning point in my spirit and a turning point in art.

Xie Rong’s paper self-made book

I am a very emotional person. From small to large, I can feel the impact on my body and emotions around me. I like performance and like to speak, but I didn’t find a suitable channel to send it out. Body writing made me open my voice. I realized that my voice and my story are powerful. I used to think that this is just my personal experience. I think art is not personal but public. Everyone can feel and Experience, so I feel too personal to become very narrow. But after reading the book of Xisu, I found that it was not. When I put my body in the big age, I suddenly had power. I found the art of performance art and the sheep to express myself.

Xie Rong’s paper self-made book

2. What is the first performance art work?

In fact, this starts from the fact that I stopped writing for two years. When I was 21, I married an Irishman. After seven years, I separated. Later, I met my father to commit suicide. The two worlds collapsed at the same time, causing me to collapse. I have not created any works for two years. From 2011 I entered the Royal College of Art and followed Nigel Rolfe to study performance art.

“Send Book” was created in 2011 by artists during performances

“Book” was created in 2011. The artist is barefoot and uses ink to wash his hair.

My first performance art work was “Send a Book,” which was created in 2011. I was studying printmaking and learned that the world’s first prints were made with women’s hair instead of silk. So I went back to the woman’s body and painted it with ink on her hair. The painting was very abstract and it was an understanding of my own hair. I spent five hours creating an eleven-meter abstract scroll that represents my eleven years with my ex-husband. After bathing, the water washed the paint off the hair, and the ink was painted all over the body. At that moment, I felt that I was born again. Many of my works draw on the works of predecessors and need to think about how to turn them into their own artistic language. I feel that my cultural background is very important.

Xie Rong is painting with his hair

“Send Book” was created in 2011. The artist paints on a long roll of eleven meters.

3. This time, “My Father and My Son,” I used an object like a ball, which seems to appear in your previous work.

The object was woven from bamboo strips and covered with more than 80 sheets of rice paper. The shape is not very precise. It is made up of two parts, like a lantern, uterus, breast, testicles, planet, silkworm cocoons, eggs, nests, and so on. It also appeared in my four-hour behavioral work, Be the Inside of the Vase, in 2012. The image at the time was more precise and it was a vase.

Bamboo and rice paper woven objects

Objects appearing in “My Father and My Son”

At that time, the museum did not allow me to ignite the vase. I stood in the whole body with Meilan Zhuju, and asked the audience to throw a water polo to break the vase. The story of my father and me has puzzled me for so many years, and I hope to break it. The audience broke the lantern with 150 water polo. The water polo lost its light in 5 minutes and washed off the blue and white porcelain patterns and pigments on my body.

Xie Rong painted part of the bamboo on his body

Xie Rong’s 2012 performance art work “Being the Inner of the Vase”, which also appeared similar objects

One of the water polo players was very hard when they lost it. It hit my eyes and it hurts. The dark circles are like pandas for two weeks. This is a kind of violence. It is a retrospective of the cold violence I felt when I was a child. My mother has a face to face. I am not allowed to talk about their divorce. It is a mental imprisonment for me. At the time, an editor wrote a commentary and said that it was very repugnant to this kind of violence, and he did not know how to become a party to violence. She feels that the artist appears in a fragile and weak image, using his own vulnerability to make the audience become weaker, and the artist controls the mood of the audience.

The audience threw the water polo to the artist, the water polo broke the rice paper, and washed off the paint on the artist.

4. You just mentioned that there is a water polo that hits your eyes. Does it mean that there are many sudden and random factors in the performance of performance art?

Yes, there was an unexpected situation in the performance art performance of “My Father and My Son”. After my father died, I really wanted to burn the lanterns that were not allowed to be lit before. Originally, the fire was very beautiful when I was experimenting the previous day. The ashes floated up and slowly fell. At that time, it should be the end of my performance art. On the second day of the official performance, I found that the paste completely prevented me from burning the lantern. I used to use the pvc adhesive that was very flammable in the UK.

After the flames are gathered, leave scars and holes

Everyone saw it at the time. Some people gave me a lighter. Many people who had heard my thoughts wondered how I would continue to the next step, and most of the audience didn’t know that this momentum was not my original idea. I found that I liked this kind of burning way. The flame burned up, and soon the flames went out again. It was both arrogant and subtle. Curator JonasStampe said that this is the sorrow of people. You want him to drift with the wind in a big fire, but it is always lingering. This is the most real emotion and life of man.

Later, when I was communicating with a Swedish artist, he felt that the most striking thing about performance art was that while the audience was thinking, the artist was thinking about the direction of performance. This is also the place where performance art is different from step-by-step stage play. It is a real situation on the scene, rather than step by step according to the script. When I wanted to burn this lantern and burned it, during this time, everyone had a lot of ideas and removed all the factors of the stage and performance.

5. You said that you have n’t thought about how to explain this work with your mother after returning to the UK. Is it afraid that the mother can’t accept the nude or do you say a lot of personal family scars in the work?

I think that for performance artists, the body is no longer naked, but a carrier of art. In fact, this is more about my mother’s face. My mother is a soldier. My father is a little punk. It is a waver in the rivers and lakes. She wants to use her love to save a fallen soul. At that time, the mother’s family did not agree with them. After quarreling with the family, the mother rushed out of the house and suffered a car accident causing the uterus to shift, leaving a scar on the lower back. In “Inner of the Vase”, I set up a canal with a water polo. The shape is a map of China. It has nothing to do with politics. It is the shape of the scar on my mother’s lower back.

The canal of Chinese land graphics is the scar of the mother

After the performance art performance

The behavior I did at the time was not only showing my own pain, but also showing my mother’s pain. When I told my mother about this behavior, she was very angry and said, “I have been divorced for 30 years, and even my best friend has not told me. I don’t want others to see my jokes because the Chinese believe that the ugliness cannot be promoted. You made a work, the whole world knows about me and your father, and the whole world knows your growth experience.”

But I think it’s actually like being happy to write in the novel “Good Women in China”. “The custom of China is to face, but the face is also part of your body. It hurts your own heart and hurts your face. “”

6. You used a very calm tone to tell the story in “My Father and My Son”. What does the power of language and narrative mean for your performance art?

My mentor, Nigel Rolfe, and I said that when you are most powerful, when you are silent, you need to learn to control your own voice. When doing the act, I am now reminding myself to come. The professor also told me to remove the personal feelings, because the story is already very personal, there is no need to go to lyrics, and the lyrics will look very artificial. Speaking very peacefully, then it is a story, emotions are something that others have to experience, not what you emphasize.

7. Why do you insist on doing performance art?

Let me take a picture of my film based on my work in 2013. At that time, I talked about my father’s experience. His life represented the experience of people of that era going to sea to do business. He accumulated a lot of wealth, but he died in a car accident and killed many innocent people. Then he was sentenced to jail and imprisoned, and his family was ruined to redeem his freedom. After he was released from prison, his life was declining. His life represents a lot of tragic people. I received letters from audiences around the world, and I told them the tragic story of their personal privacy. I have found a medium that allows me to express myself and put my personal stories in the big age and resonate with people.

It is very fortunate to be a performance artist. You can use your work to record your own changes and record your life. When I performed the performance of “The Inner of the Vase”, I had a very young body. At that time, I was talking about the relationship between my daughter and my father. The image is in line with the image of a very small girl. This time, “My Father and My Son,” I am already a mother who has given birth to a child. My image is a daughter and a mother. I think that when I am old, I have to do a corresponding behavioral work. It is wrinkles all over the body, and the feeling of a ceramic to the last time after the time splits.

When I was doing performance art in Berlin, I met Linda Mary Montano, who did the same thing every three years. At the age of 75, lying on the street in Gothenburg, a very faint “squeaky” sound every second. On behalf of the heartbeat, for an entire hour, the last woman yelled at her with a horn, “Linda, got up, and died after sleeping.” She also recorded herself every day: “I am dying, I am going to die, I am Every day is dying.” She said that she would do the day she eventually died.

Adherence to performance art is not just a matter of emotional and ideological needs. Performance art is very inclusive, and all the techniques I have studied before can be placed in performance art. Performance art is not that you see a picture on the wall. I am this piece of art. I live in front of you and can re-emphasize the purest and most essential relationship between people. Nigel Rolfe once said: “Being a performance art is a responsibility. We live in a turbulent society, and war still exists. If we can use our individual voices and behaviors to infect a small group of people, we express our concern for society. The sense of responsibility, then the performance art is meaningful.”

Other works:

“Touching the blessing”

When Xie Rong was pregnant for six months, she invited the audience to touch her pregnant belly. Life is shared and feelings are shared.