It is our pleasure to invite you to ‘Doing Time’: Tehching Hsieh in Conversation with Adrian Heathfield, co-presented by Taipei Fine Arts Museum and Hong Kong Arts Centre. In advance of his new exhibition at the Venice Biennale 2017, the seminal performance artist Tehching Hsieh will discuss his astounding series of lifeworks from 1978 – 1999 with five One Year Performances and a ‘Thirteen Year Plan’. He will explore the concerns that led him into these long durational works of subjection. Hsieh is joined by the exhibition curator Adrian Heathfield, who will discuss his approach to Hsieh’s work, its use of time, law and the body, and its prescient relation to capitalism’s systems of control.
Please join us on Friday, 24 March at 2 pm for the discussion at Hong Kong Arts Centre’s Cinema.
The event is invite only with limited seating. If you could be so kind to confirm your attendance to our PR partner Vince Chan, Brunswick Arts ([email protected]) by Thursday, 16 March.
Speaker Biographies
Tehching Hsieh was born on December 31st 1950 in Nan-Chou, Taiwan. Hsieh dropped out from high school in 1967 and took up painting. After finishing his army service (1970 – 73), Hsieh had his first solo show at the gallery of the American News Bureau in Taiwan. Shortly after this solo show, Hsieh stopped painting. He made a performance action, Jump, in which he broke both of his ankles. He trained as a seaman, which he then used as a means to enter the United States. In July of 1974, Hsieh finally arrived at a small port near Philadelphia. He was an illegal immigrant in the States for fourteen years until he was granted amnesty in 1988. Starting in the late nineteen-seventies, Hsieh made five One Year Performances and a ‘Thirteen Year Plan,’ inside and outside his studio in New York City. Using long durations, making art and life simultaneous, Hsieh achieved one of the most radical approaches in contemporary art. The first four One Year Performances made Hsieh a regular name in the art scene in New York; the last two pieces, intentionally retreating from the art world, set a tone of sustained invisibility. Since the millennium, released from the restriction of not showing his works during a thirteen-year period, Hsieh has exhibited his work in North and South America, Asia and Europe. Hsieh lives in Brooklyn and is represented by Sean Kelly Gallery. www.tehchinghsieh.com
Adrian Heathfield is a writer and curator. He co-curated Live Culture (Tate Modern 2003) and the creative research project Performance Matters (2009 – 14). He was a curatorial attaché for the Sydney Biennale (2016) and, as part of the freethought collective, was a co-director of the Bergen Assembly (2016). He is curator of Taiwan’s representation at the 57th Venice Biennale 2017. He has published extensively on contemporary performance, art, theater and dance. He is the author of Out of Now a monograph on the artist Tehching Hsieh, co-editor of Perform, Repeat, Record and editor of Live: Art and Performance. His writings have been translated into eight languages. He has worked with many artists and thinkers on critical and creative collaborations including film dialogues and performance lectures. Heathfield is Professor of Performance and Visual Culture at the University of Roehampton, London. www.adrianheathfield.net