Why The Performance?

Organizer: Ming Contemporary Art Museum
Curator: Qiu Zhijie, Fu Liaoliao

Producer: Li Songjian, Ling Feifei

Artists:
Ali Al-Fatlawi & Wathiq Al-Ameri, Cao Fei, Cao Yu, Chen Chenchen, Chen Chieh-jen, Geng Jianyi, Grass Stage, Guido van der Werve, Han Qin, Hao Jingban, He Zike, Hito Steyerl, Hu Xiangqian, Huang Fangling, Huang Songhao, Jon Rafman, Katarzyna Kozyra, Li Haiguang & Zhang Yunfeng, Li Ming, Lu Yang, Ma Qiusha, Miao Ying,Niao Collective, No Survivors, Oliver Herring, Payne Zhu, Peter fischli & David Weiss, Qiu Chuangwei, Roman Signer, Shao Ze, Shi Qing, Song Gewen, Sunteck Yao, The HAPPENING X Model Girls, Tsang Tsou Choi, UFO, Wang Chao, Wang Jianwei, Wang Yuyang, Weng Jie, Wu Junyong, Wu Meng, Xi Chuan, Xu Zhen, Yang Jian, Yuan Gong, Yuan Keru, Yunyu “Ayo” Shih, Zhang Congcong, Zhang Qing, Zhang Yue, Zhao Bandi, Zhao Jingyan, Zhou Xiaohu

Why the Performance? 
The exhibition Why the Performance? explorers the various forms of performance in daily life and approaches a series of questions arising from it. How could the performance become a kind of politics when politics became a form of performance? What is the meaning assigned by the performance to our daily life when it acts as a strategy of propaganda and presentation of miracles? How does the performance become a means of de-significance that has been unexpectedly reduced to entertainment at such a pan-performance epoch featuring an overflow of social media and the popularity of histrionic personality? How to reinterpret the power of the audience and the onlooking type politics in the relationship between watching and being watched?

The works the exhibition will present are closely linked to the performance and are produced by more than 50 artists worldwide in different phases and forms of installation, moving image, performance art, theater, dance, sound, poetry, etc. questioning (answering): Why the Performance?