Opening performance: NIGHT

Friday, November 4, 7pm

In the performance, Mai and Yitian will attempt to materialize breath and explore the ambience of materiality, through light, shadow, smell, air movement, vibration, resonance, sound, and urban memories.

NIGHT marks the beginning of Mai and Yitian’s collaboration. After NIGT breaks, the collaboration will be continued as The City Breathes in the Interior of Buildings, an installation in the daylight.

NIGHT will start as the day gets dark at 7pm. 

Installation: The City Breathes in the Interior of Buildings

As facial masks and travel bans become another physical obstacle in between breathes, Endo and Yan would like to reconsider breathing as a radical form of self and mutual care. When breathes gather, they create a space. It is a space dedicated to breathing together, where the spirituality of technology reflects our minds and bodies. It is a space dedicated to meditation, where lives meet dreams. It is also a space dedicated to exhibiting, where art practice is discussed as intervals of filling and emptying.

About the artists:

Mai Endo is an actor and artist. She received her Ph.D. in Fine Art (mural painting) from Tokyo University of the Arts in 2021. In her artistic practice, she uses her own body in playful ways through chatting, DIY and performance. Endo’s practice is based on queer feminist theory and her research on various materials including historical folktales, teen-comics and Fan-Fiction, and the marriage system and the laws that regulate freedom of expression.

Endo’s solo exhibitions include “Harboring a Burning Passion” at Satellite Gallery SA-KURA at Aichi University of the Arts, Aichi, Japan (2021), and theater performances include “I Am Not a Feminist!” at Festival/Tokyo 17, Tokyo, Japan (2017).  Selected group shows include “La clausura del cuerpo” at Las Cigarreras Centro Cultural, Alicante, Spain(2022), “Feminisms” at 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (2021). In 2018, she launched the queer feminist art zine “Multiple Spirits” with critic/curator Mika Maruyama. They have organized the exhibition “When It Waxes and Wanes” at Vereinigung bildender Künstlerinnen Österreichs (VBKÖ), Vienna (2019). Endo received her Ph.D. in Fine Art (mural painting) from Tokyo University of the Arts in 2021. Based in Tokyo, she currently stays in New York, US as a researcher under the overseas study program for upcoming artists of the Agency for Cultural Affairs.

Yitian Yan’s art practice picks up the subtle oscillations between materiality and ephemerality in daily life through the medium of performance. Often amplifying durational, mundane gestures, these performance works approach to discuss forms of belonging and co-existence. At the same time, she explores the extensive spatial structures of such happenings through the medium of installation, abstracting concepts into stability and fluidity, tension and gravity in the built environment. Yitian’s practice reflects on the conceptual art tradition and responds to the uncertainties in the current global environment.

Yitian’s works have been subject to solo exhibitions at the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural Center, New York, and Shasha Gallery, Shanghai. Other places her works have been exhibited and performed include Bungee Space, New York, Power Station of Art, Shanghai, Takahashi Shipyard Building, Kagawa, Photo LA, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Yitian received an MFA degree at the School of Art Institute of Chicago in 2018. She grew up in Shenzhen, China, currently lives and works in New York, US.