Wenmin Tong
area: Visual & Performance Art
Key Facts
nationality
Chinaarea
Visual & Performance Artresidence
Chongqingrecommending institution
MQtime period
May 2024 - June 2024Wenmin Tong (* 1989 in Chongqing, China) completed her BFA at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 2012. Her works often focus on the interface between individual perception and the external environment. She stimulates visual poetry and inspires action through behaviours that seem counter-intuitive at first glance. Through often simplified or regulated movements, her work hints at the allegorical nature of body and action in a semantically rich context.
The artist has participated in various international solo and group exhibitions and art festivals, including Essence Contemporary Art Museum, Chongqing; OCT Boxes Art Museum, Foshan; WHITE SPACE, Beijing; Thousand Plateau Art Space, Chengdu; Organ Haus Art Space, Chongqing; and Lillehammer Art Museum, Lillehammer; HE ART MUSEUM, Foshan; OCAT Shenzhen, Shenzhen; By Art Matters, Hangzhou; G Museum, Nanjing; Power Station of Art, Shanghai; Koganecho Area Management Centre, Yokohama; Asian Art Museum, San Francisco and others. Her artistic achievements have been recognised by various awards such as the Grand Jury Prize of the Huayu Youth Award 2018, the First Prize of the 8th New Star Art Award of the Deji Art Museum 2018 and the Nomination Prize of the 5th Contemporary Sculpture Award 2017. She also received the Accolade Artist Award in 2016 for documenting Chinese performance art. She has also been selected for residency projects such as the Swiss Arts Council Artists Residency, Switzerland (2021); Offshore Residency, Dinawan Island (2019) and others. Tong currently works and lives in Chongqing.
Wenmin Tong will continue the project "From South to North" (2022) during her residency at MQ and present it at MQ Pop-Up Schauraum (Opening 05.06.2024). It is a long-term and ongoing performative project based on research and practice. As Tong travels through different regions of China, she explores their geographical features and acquires local knowledge, exploring various ecological environments such as rainforests, deserts, glaciers, waterways, mountains, coasts, rural roads and urban areas. Her aim is to weave an emotional network of ecological perception and performative morality through an interdisciplinary approach that includes performance video, live performances, installations, writing and publications. In contemplating the immense expanse of sky and earth, a certain smallness of the human body is revealed. The artist aims to use painting to capture the abstract dimensions of the landscape; in her view, painting offers the opportunity not only to depict the grandeur of nature, but also to reflect the connection between landscape and the human spirit. In a symbolic sense, viewers can experience the vitality of the natural environment in an enclosed space represented by paper, while the interaction of human hands and paper acts as a stage for the transformation and release of energy, information and emotion. During her residency, Wenmin Tong is planning an action painting performance that draws on the multiple facets of the landscape.