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Deciding Whether to Worship His Own Power or the Power of His Own, 2012

2012
Performance & Installation
Dimension Varies
Tobacco, cigarette filters, cigarette rolling papers

Selected Exhibitions

2012
“Liste 17”, Liste Art Fair, Basel, Switzerland

Artist Statement

In medical science, time is materialized by different figures and transform into various scales. One of the very well known researches stated that smoking a cigarette means reducing 11 minutes from one’s life. However, what does that means if obviously we don’t have any clue for our lifespan. The minuend in this simple subtraction is actually just an unknown. Thus, through a performance of rolling tobacco, which spread around the artist in a circular form as a representation of lifecycle, into hundreds of cigarettes, there is a tension created between an everyday life action and the theatrical subtlety. Artist questions the possibility of temporality manipulation and the validity of time scale. Develop upon the context of performance art history, Wong’s performance discuss the inter-relationship of body; life and death; as well as duration. Artists pushes their physical limitation when they treat their own body as a piece of materials for arts, then works are sometimes created with an instantaneous life challenging and physical integrity expressive anxiety. Although it is a fixed duration in Wong’s performance as to coherent with the conceptual idea of one day, the visual impact of the torturing floor-kneeing posture and the resulting pile of cigarettes is prolonging the run into an imaginary everlasting torment. Setting the performance in the frame of an art fair, the work also bring up the dialogue for audience between process of art making and the commodification of it by subverting the fair as a stage and determiner of art, while the art market being the owner and distributor of it.

Deciding Whether to Worship His Power or the Power of His Own

Performance Still at Liste 17, Basel, Switzerland

Deciding Whether to Worship His Power or the Power of His OwnPerformance Still at Liste 17, Basel, SwitzerlandDeciding Whether to Worship His Power or the Power of His OwnPerformance Still at Liste 17, Basel, Switzerland