Lee Mingwei and Bill T. Jones: Our Labyrinth at The MET

MetLiveArts, in partnership with New York Live Arts, organised a unique, site-specific iteration of Taiwanese-American artist Lee Mingwei’s durational performance work OUR LABYRINTH, originally performed in 2015 at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum and subsequently at the Centre Pompidou in 2017.

For the 2020 performance, Lee Mingwei has invited legendary American dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones to collaborate on a special version of Our Labyrinth specifically for New York City and The Met as a meditation on this moment of instability and profound change. The performance, with three separate parts on 16, 23 and 30 September 2020, was a live event for online audiences, streamed from three Met galleries while the Museum was closed.

Each performance features a single dancer – different each time – who uses a stylised broom to sweep a mound of rice along a labyrinthine path of their choosing. Performing this profoundly spiritual task, the dancer may encounter obstacles along the way but continues to navigate silently and mindfully.

Lee conceives of this project as a gift from the performers to the viewers, providing a “pure” space both physically and spiritually. Jones expresses his influence on the work, a respectful conversation with Lee across time and space, through the diverse cast of performers representing the spectrum of New York dance and performance, and in the sonic landscape provided by three experimental vocalists and musicians that echo through the galleries.

“I conceived OUR LABYRINTH as an embrace between creation and destruction. The current iteration, enriched and empowered by Bill’s gift, is an offering to those who ever lived on this sacred land known as Mannahatta, as well as to every artist who collectively and unknowingly created the Metropolitan Museum, Spirit House of Mannahatta.” — Lee Mingwei

Click on the links to Performance 2 and Performance 3.

About ASIA

ASIA | Art Spectacle International Asia is an independent online magazine covering contemporary art from Asia-Pacific to the Middle East.

Founder and Editor C. A. Xuân Mai Ardia is a Vietnamese-Italian from Padova, Italy. She currently resides near Venice, Italy, but she has lived around the world for more than 20 years. London was her home throughout university and her first forays in the art world and gallery work, until she moved to Shanghai in 2006 where she worked for Pearl Lam Galleries (then Contrasts Gallery) until 2009.  She has lived between Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and Padova, Italy in 2009-2016, where she worked at Galerie Qyunh, Craig Thomas Gallery and contributed to Art Radar.

Mai holds a BA in Chinese | History of Art and Archaeology and an MA in Chinese Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, UK, as well as an MSc in Development Studies | Conservation of Cultural Heritage from the School of Development, Innovation and Change (SDIC), University of Bologna, Italy. She has worked in the conservation of world cultural heritage in Rome and in contemporary art galleries in London, Shanghai and Ho Chi Minh City. Her articles have been published in Art Review Asia, Art Radar, The Culture Trip and CoBo Social.

Mai joined the Art Radar team as Copy Editor in May 2013, and became Staff Writer in November of the same year. Continuing to contribute her writing to Art Radar, she took up the role of Managing Editor from November 2015 to December 2018, when Art Radar ceased publication.

To continue on and contribute to the dissemination of contemporary art ideas and practices from Asia, Mai founded ASIA in Spring 2019.

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