1 Jun - 31 Aug 2022

Sichong Xie ( China, United States )

The project Sichong Xie would like to realize at ZK/U is an opera-based durational performance/installation. This project features an array of objects and movements - scaffolding, industrial privacy screen, sailboat cloth, and an experimental opera based on gendered labor and invisible labor - through which she reimagines the architectural drawing her grandfather created in late 1950s. In this project, Xie draws attention to invisible labor behind each architecture or institution by incorporating an industrial privacy screen/tarp throughout the installation as a way of repurposing a mass-produced material that is commonly used between construction zones and industrial sites. Scaffolding, as a metaphor, speaks to temporary work in progress in which much invisible labor is behind the privacy screen. This project connects the soft memory of never-completed intellectual labor—her grandfather’s architectural renderings—with the never-ending labor required by commercial building. Through Xie’s work with a diverse range of media, her practice blurs the lines between reverence and popular culture aesthetics. Beginning with the personal and cultural, Xie navigates her work toward the public and the political.