March 26 @ 4 p.m. – Seeing and Being Scene: Modalities in Performance by Artist Xiouping

Wednesday, March 26, at 4 p.m. in Corns 312: In this lecture (talk), “Seeing and Being Scene: Modalities in Performance,” xiouping will investigate the reciprocal dynamics of performance, documentation, and spectatorship—how performance is not only something that is seen but also something that sees back.
Drawing from their experiences as a photographer immersed in the underground hip-hop scenes from the East Coast to the West Coast since the early 90s and their long-standing practice in performance and self-portraiture, xiouping will explore how rest, ritual, somatic practices, and embodiment function as core modalities within performance.

Xiouping (b. analog era), affectionately known as “TNT” for their Taiwanese and Texan roots, is an American New Genres artist whose work serves as a vital intersection of identity politics and storytelling. Through installations, sculpture, photography, writing, video, and performance, Xiouping navigates time and space, meditating on the diaspora of animacy and co-worlding cultural heritage. Their practice deconstructs oppressive systems and societal norms, fostering a reclamation of agency, healing, and a subversion of dominant narratives while challenging the relationship between art and audience.

Academic recognitions include a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the San Francisco Art Institute and a Master of Fine Arts with a Distinguished Studio Award from Otis College of Art and Design. xiouping has exhibited across the US and Mexico City, with notable showcases in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake City. They also developed the curriculum *Modalities of Performance*, examining rest as resistance, ritual as activism, embodiment as connection, and somatics as transformative practice. In their lecture *A Seed is Born: From the Soil We Rise to the Soil We Will Return*, xiouping uses seeds as metaphors for resilience within grief rituals.

OWU Sponsoring Organization/Office: Ohio Wesleyan University Fine Arts Department, Department of Health & Human Kinetics, and Public Health Program
Contact: Christopher Fink at clfink@owu.edu