“I have been There” is an on-going performance series that explores relationships between death, belonging and diaspora by Montreal artist Chun Hua Catherine Dong.
Every time I travel to a city, I make a new duvet with Chinese embroidered fabric. Covered by the duvet, I lay on ground of historical sites, landmarks, and tourist attractions as a sign of negotiating and/or engaging with cultures and spaces -artist statement
The project began in 2015 and has been performed in London, Athens, Istanbul, Beijing, Hangzhou, Manchester, Paris, Los Angles, Santiago, Mexico City, Athens, Toronto, Boston, Houston, Vancouver, Chicago, Miami, San Luis Obispo, Seoul and other locations.
Chun Hua Catherine Dong is a Chinese-born Montreal-based visual artist working with performance, photography, and video. She received a BFA from Emily Carr University Art & Design and MFA from Concordia University in Canada. She has just been selected to participate this fall in the MOMENTA | Biennale de l’image in Montreal.
She says the works are inspired by funeral tradition from her hometown in China. “When an elder is dead, daughters of this elder make duvets with silk fabric, called Corpse Covers, to cover their dead parent’s body. If this elder has six daughters, his/her body will be covered by six different duvets, layer by layer. For me, as a person who lives abroad alone without family, the question of who will bury me after I die sometimes bothers me. Therefore, I make my own Corpse Covers and bury myself publicly and repeatedly wherever I go.
See more on her website, here.
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Yes, quite an interesting performance. I like it!
Very cool!