Guanyin Pusa

Multi-media projection, gold leaf, molded latex, site-specific wood, green tea powder, color pigment, cactus, sandalwood, and sound

Duration: 3 days

Seoul Art Space Geumcheon Residency, South Korea

2015

 

Article by: JW Stella (Director of JW Stella Arts Collectives, International Associate Curator of Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art)

Published in the Korean Naver, blog and Geumcheon Blogspot

 

Of Saudi origin, UK-born and UAE-based, artist and cultural practitioner Ghada Da is one of the young cultural nomads whose practice is based on relational performances.

 

Being inspired by French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who said ‘we are not human beings having a spiritual experience; but spiritual beings having a human experience’, Ghada Da’s current art performances across the East communicate beyond language, race, gender and socio-cultural-political boundaries.

 

The body and spirit are core to her practice; the artist’s body itself acts as a host that allows her creativity to germinate. Through the process of overturning the notion of identities misjudged by the stereotypical prejudices within different paradigms, Ghada Da endeavours to come closer to her true ego.

 

In the summer of 2015, she visited Shanghai and Seoul, the fastest-changing cities in Asia, in the pursuit of creating two new productions: 私语[tsuyuu] and Orient. 私语[tsuyuu] (2015), a site-specific performative installation, was commissioned by the Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, China for its multi-sensory cultural project, TIME CAPSULE: Allegories of Shanghai, 2015, which emanated from the proposition of ‘culture’ as both a complex form of ecology that exists and a constantly evolving state of mind that is as organic as our use of language.