At 6:00 p.m. on January 22, the Cloister Project will present Polyphonic, a public event with performance, at the Cloisters Apartments. Shown as part of Liao Fei’s solo show “Depiction,” Polyphonic will be led by artist Xu Lishuang, who will explore the multiple relationships between a person and a table through the act of climbing.

“Depiction” focuses on the fixed relationships between people and everyday objects, in the hopes of dissolving those fixed relationships through practice and thereby approaching the objects themselves. Xu Lishuang has been invited to create new rules of the game based on Liao Fei’s key image of climbing on a table. She invites the viewer to facilitate and participate in this interactive game. The performers will constantly “grow,” increasing the uncertainty between the body and the object and transforming fixed bodily structures through coordination. When they explore climbing on the table, the participants form complex combinations of the body and the table, as well as the group and the object. Through an interactive game between participants and the happenstance of an in-person performance, viewers will gain an all-new perspective that is not limited by daily experience, which in turn allows us to examine our connection with tables and other objects.

About the Artist

Xu Lishuang

Xu Lishuang was born in Changsha, Hunan. She graduated with a degree in fine art from the University of the Arts London (Chelsea College of Arts), and currently lives in Shanghai. Constant movement toward large cities has indirectly fed her long-standing interest in the variety of modern life. In video, sound, and performance works, Xu uses the body’s intervention in our time and space to explore the interactive relationships between individual perceptions and objective reality.