Gao Ling, Playing Field, 2023; Curve Restaurant, 2023; Lily!, 2023
Playing Field
Gao Ling in collaboration with Song Xin Lin invites visitors to partake in an interactive installation and performance titled, Playing Field. The performance examines the ways in which Chinatown serves as a touchpoint for diverse communities and intergenerational histories, connecting the past and the future, tracking the individual threads of personal journeys and their twists and turns. Inspired by the classical Daoist idiom (Zhuangzi 庄子·山木) about the mantis catching the cicada whilst being watched and followed by the oriole, Gao examines the concept of games in our daily lives, played out in our nuanced interactions and power dynamics with one another, our choices, reactions, behaviors, and paths we take. She asks, where did you come from? Where are you going? Would life be more chaotic or more exciting if one had a real track to follow? What happens when our paths and symbolic threads intersect and then separate, and what forms take shape from multiple threads being tangled, knotted, braided or unraveled?
Lily!
Gao Ling’s interactive installation and conceptual shop Lily! reflects on the ways in which Chinatown serves as a touchpoint for diverse communities, transmitting stories of personal journeys and shared experiences via trade, distribution and consumption of objects. Visitors are invited to present their personal reflections of and experiences within Chinatown in tangible or intangible forms ranging from keepsakes to sounds, impressions, or stories in exchange for an item in the conceptual shop. All of the ‘objects’ in the shop are free, to be traded, exchanged, or gifted and will continue to evolve with each visitor’s contribution throughout the exhibition’s duration. Whether it is a fragment of memory, a song, a dish, or a sentence, a leftover, a gift, a scene, an act, or a movie - these offerings and objects enfold fragmented memories that constitute a precious part of the broader human experience and our interconnectedness.
Curve Restaurant
Gao Ling in collaboration with Austin YIP, Gabby WEN, Jorge Bachmann, XU Cheng present, The Curve Restaurant, an experiential dining experience that reinterprets societal conventions of dining via the mechanisms of play, games and illusion. In collaboration with sound artists, the multi-sensorial experiences evoked by the restaurant are intended to be pleasant, disturbing, mischievous, engaging, dramatic or elusive.
About Gao Ling
Gao Ling, born in 1980, works in London, Shanghai and San Francisco, and currently lives in Shanghai and San Francisco. Walking between performance, photography, installation, and social platform activities, Gao Ling's works often have a sense of gameplay and humor, exploring various issues such as femininity, the environment, and humanity, and evolving with the needs of The Times and individuals. Her artworks have been featured in a number of exhibitions including in e-flux project: PAWN SHOP ( New York ), Get It Louder, traveling exhibition "WOMEN 2011" ( Shanghai-San Francisco-Miami ), the 1st Biennale of UK Chinese Artists 2013 ( London ), Finalist of WMA Masters (Hong Kong), The Contesting body ( Ray Art Center Shanghai ), + FOLLOW ( Shanghai MOCA ), etc. Gao Ling’s work was published in "Hey!TTTTouch Me" written by critic Alpesh Kantilal Patel and published in "YISHU" magazine, WOMEN ARTIST IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA issue of Tate Modern Museum in London and Visual Activism in the 21st Century: Art, Protest and Resistance in an Uncertain World by Dr. Monica Merlin from the Asia Pacific Research Center of Tate Modern, and "Brand New Art from China - A Generation on the rise", written by New York art critic Barbara Pollack.