Two commissions from Korean artists feature in Art Night 2019: Christine Sun Kim and this one:
Zadie Xa: Child of Magohalmi and the Echos of Creation
Saturday 22 June 2019, 7pm-3am
Walthamstow Library | High Street | Walthamstow | London E17 7JN
Nearest tube: Walthamstow Central
Genre: Dance | Installation | Live Performance | Sound
Zadie Xa: Child of Magohalmi and the Echos of Creation. 2019 HD video film still
About the work
For her Art Night 2019 commission London-based, Canadian artist Zadie Xa will stage a multimedia theatrical installation in the historic reading room of Walthamstow Library. Audiences are invited to enter into an immersive, subaquatic and marine environment of spoken word and sonic interludes. The artist will present an origin story inspired loosely by Korean folkloric creation myths that centre around women and the passing down of ancestral knowledge through matrilineal social structures by way of atmospheric lighting, surround-sound and large-scale video projections, interrupted by impromptu performances by dancers and musicians throughout the night.
Child of Magohalmi and the Echos of Creation is developed in collaboration with Benito Mayor Vallejo and performed by Iris Chan, Jia-Yu Corti, Mary Feliciano, Jihye Kim and Yumino Seki.
About the artist
Zadie Xa uses live performance, video, painting and textiles to question how cultures inform identities and notions of self. Her layered costume works are sites for exploring personal cultural histories that stitch together personally relevant imagery sourced from music, digital space, fashion and art history. Xa has developed a system of personalised symbols that propose entirely new images and objects, creating a personal visual language for articulating nuanced Asian identity narratives, which are frequently situated within fantastical or supernatural realms.
About the venue
The historic Walthamstow Library is a Victorian Grade II* listed building, built with money donated by the Scottish-American businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, whose portrait bust can be seen on the exterior of the building.
Co-commissioned by Art Night, London, Yarat, Baku, Tramway, Glasgow and De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea.
Further thanks to Korean Cultural Centre UK and Valeria Napoleone.
