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BIO
Chun Hua Catherine Dong is a Chinese born Montreal based visual artist working with performance, photography, and video. She received an MFA at Intermedia from Concordia University and a BFA at Visual Art from Emily Carr University Art & Design in Canada. She has performed in multiple international performance art festivals, such as Rapid Pulse International Performance Art Festival in Chicago, 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art in Toronto, ENCUENTRO Performance in Santiago, The Great American Performance Art in New York, Place des Arts in Montreal, Infr’Action in Venice, Dublin Live Art Festival in Dublin, Experimental Action/ Perfor-mance Art in Houston, Internationales Festival für Performance in Mannheim, Inverse Performance Art Festival in California, Miami Performance International Festival, Nuit Blanches in Montreal, Visualeyez Performance Festival in Edmonton, M:ST Performance Art Festival in Calgary, and many public art galleries and spaces in Europe, North and South America.
She has exhibited her works at The Musée d’Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne in France, Quebec City Biennial, MOMENTA | Biennale de l’image, Kaunas Biennial, Canadian Cultural Centre Paris, The Aine Art Museum in Tornio, Bury Art Museum in Manchester, Museo de la Cancillería in Mexico City, Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, DongGong Museum of Photograph in South Korea, Hu-Bei Museum of Fine Art in China, Art Museum at University of Toronto, Art Gallery of Markham, and so on. Her video work has been screened in Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Colombia, Croatia, Denmark, Fin-land, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, UK, USA, and so on. Among many other grants and awards, she was the recipient of the Franklin Furnace Award for con-temporary avant-garde art in New York in 2014, listed the “10 Artists Who Are Reinventing History” by Canadian Art in 2017, and named “The Artist of the Year” at the DongGang International Photo Festival in South Korea in 2018. She was awarded with Cultural Diversity in Visual Arts Award by the Conseil des arts de Montréal in 2020. She was also a finalist for Contemporary Art Award at Le Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (Prix en art actuel du MNBAQ) 2020.
The Soft Porcelain, 2022 - Inflatable sculpture,
50’’x 58’’x108’’
This soft inflatable bear is inspired by Chinese blue-and-white porcelain. Its kneeling pose is reminiscent of both prayer and corporal punishment prostrations — a gesture of both hope and vulnerability. This blue-and-white porcelain bear has four ears, implying the union of mother and child. The artwork is part of the exhibition At the Edge of Two Worlds that explores new digital possibilities for bridging gaps between memories and experiences, whilst mediating culture and identity through the lens of gender and diaspora. It speaks to the ways in which gender is explored, lost, created and re-created, and how digital diasporic experiences have shaped the notion of home and self with the rise of digitalization and globalization. In the space of digital experimentation and representation, Dong blurs the boundaries of two worlds: here and there, actual and virtual, culture and nature, human and animal. Futures are envisioned, which dissolve binaries and borders, creating a new social relation that sustains different ways of living and diverse beings as an act of survival.