Annie Wong: To my past and future ancestors

July 12-August 15, 2019
Performance and opening reception: July 12, 7-9pm

Open Source Gallery presents To my past and future ancestors, a multimedia installation and performance by Annie Wong.

Qin Shi Huangdi (210–209 BCE), the first emperor of China, erected a massive necropolis to expand his reign to the realm of the afterlife. This included the notorious employment of six thousand terracotta warriors. To my past and future ancestors is a multimedia installation and performance that imagines and responds to an excess of Huangdi’s warrior spirits and yang (male energy) in the afterlife, causing a critical imbalance of power not unlike in the living world. Mixing traditional Chinese symbolism and feminist iconography of the West, Wong reroutes ancient ancestral Chinese worship rituals to conjure and manifest a continuum of feminist revolutionary energy both in the here and hereafter.

To my past and future ancestors centers on a shrine dedicated to the cross ally-ships between the living and the dead, the diaspora and the homeland, BIPOC women, the future and the past. Along with traditional offerings, the shrine is decorated with handmade paper spirit-gifts honoring the wisdom of three spirits: Qiu Jin, a Chinese revolutionist; Audre Lorde, a Black American poet; and Glenna Cardinal, an artist-mother from the Tsuut’ina Nation, whose work collectively provide the tools for an intersectional feminist revolution in the afterlife. As part of the ritual, these gifts are intended to be burned as an offering to past and future ancestors to come. Prior to the burning, a chant will be performed in collaboration with performers Ashleigh Goh Hua, Emily Mun, and Claire Lim. Lending from Wong’s feminist choral performance, the chant is an evocation of the generosity of female spirits to heal from a collective sense of ancestral losthood, a feeling familiar in the diaspora.

To my past and future ancestors continues Wong’s research into diasporic hauntologies and intergenerational melancholy symptomatic of ancestral amnesia. Through her work, Wong navigates losthoods from her position as a first-generation Chinese-Vietnamese Canadian with parents exiled during the American-Vietnam War. Using poetry, burning, and soundwork as a medium for invocation, Wong often collaborates with diasporic communities within a feminist framework to create rituals of remembrance as a collective form of carework.

Annie Wong is a multidisciplinary artist and writer. Through performance and installation Wong creates various platforms of participation, social engagement, and collaboration to explore the intersections of the poetic and political in everyday life. Her current research explores embodied and affective knowledge from the anger of BIPOC feminist histories and the melancholy of diasporic hauntologies. Wong has presented across North America, including at The Gardiner Museum (Toronto, ON), Studio XX (Montreal, QC), Third Space (Saint John, NB), and Intersite: Visual Arts Festival (Calgary, AB). She has held residencies at The Art Gallery of Ontario, Khyber Centre for the Arts (Halifax, NS), and the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (Banff, AL). Wong’s writing can be found in C Magazine, Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Canadian Art, Performance Research Journal (UK), and MICE Magazine.

This program is supported, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Joseph Robert Foundation and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. Open Source Gallery programming is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

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Annie Wong: To my past and future ancestors | Press Release | Installation View