Dressed in matching camo pants, t-shirt and cap, Chun Hua Catherine Dong’s face is entirely covered in deer hide she has painstakingly glued onto her face prior to the performance. Over the course of 2.5 hours, the China-born and Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal-based artist sits atop a bright yellow scaffolding, towering over the audience of the Harold J. Miossi Art Gallery, in San Luis Obispo, California in 2017. An assistant slowly pushes the scaffolding around the space as the performance unfolds. Dong imperceptibly moves as she travels across space in yoga poses: slouching over the edge of the scaffolding, lying on her side and on her back, holding the tree, the corpse, and the easy yoga poses. Already viewed as a meditative practice, the yoga poses are deliberately performed in the slowest way possible, as if to make way for the expansive and generous temporality of self-care. The slowness of her movement can also be attributed to her being completely deprived of sight. Conscientious of not falling over the edge, or making any rushed movements, Dong embraces the almost forced meditative state in which she finds herself.
Dubé, Joëlle. “Chun Hua Catherine Dong: Choosing Resilience.” Janus Unbound: Journal of Critical Studies 2, n°2 (September 2023).
