The Double by Chun Hua Catherine Dong

Chun Hua Catherine Dong is a Chinese born performance artist living and working in Canada. Her current research, “Performance Ethnography: a Method of Inquiry in Research of Visualization,” is supported by Canada Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Concordia University Faculty of Fine Arts and British Columbia Arts Council.

The Double performance by Chun Hua Catherine Dong is a series of gestures made by sixteen females that wear red mouthpieces and white bath towels.

Each female is standing in a row next to the other, facing the same direction and repeating every five minutes three still gestures: Standing, Kneeing, and lying on the floor.

The Double by Chun Hua Catherine Dong Pic 1

The Double by Chun Hua Catherine Dong Pic 3

The Double by Chun Hua Catherine Dong Pic 2

Artist quote about her artwork:

 

The gestures in the performance are inspired by gargoyle, a legendary stone-carved grotesque with a spout that normally is designed to convey water from a roof. Mouth serves as the opening for food intake and in the articulation of sound and speech. However, when performers wear the mouthpieces, or when women’s mouth is forced to open, the mouth loses its function. In fact, it silences and disables the women because they are unable to talk when their mouths are widely pulled open. This performance explores another side of the unseen and unspoken—the vulnerability, struggle, shame, and suffering that we are uneasy to share and expose while examining multifaceted struggles of a woman associated with identity, gender, and sexuality in order to reveal the struggle and conflict rooted in oppressed individuals and groups.

[toggle title=”Performers”]

  • Alida Esmail,
  • Karoline Lebrun
  • Emily Schon
  • Kendall Savage
  • Eliane Abdellahi
  • Paula Duffy
  • Danielle Doiron
  • Emilia Gallo
  • Janaki Banting
  • Elisabeth Racine
  • Anna Mayberry
  • Zoe Roux
  • Emilie L-Choquette
  • Alexandra Cote
  • Allie Blumas
  • Maude Thibault Morin
  • Claire Evans
  • Lili Monette-Crepo
  • Alexandra Cote
  • Katrina B
    and who those she is unable to name

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