Wednesday, October 26

6:30pm – 8pm

97 Kenmare Street, New York, NY

 

[RSVP]

 

In the context of our 40th anniversary exhibition Public Space in a Private Time, artist Tehching Hsieh will share his experiences about One Year Performance (1981-1982). This seminal durational performance, where he spent an entire year living outdoors, concluded during Storefront’s inaugural program Performance A-Z in 1982.
 
This conversation by Hsieh, in dialogue with Storefront’s director José Esparza Chong Cuy, is an opportunity to delve deeper into the year preceding the opening of Storefront. Hsieh and his work offer a window into the politics of public space around the Lower Manhattan of that era.
 
For this particular performance, Hsieh spent a full year living outside and moving around New York while documenting his daily experience. He pledged never to enter any building or form of shelter during the entire duration of the piece. 
 
Performance A-Z was organized by Storefront’s founders, Kyong Park and R.L. Seltman, and artist Arleen Schloss, as a 26-day sequence of performances by New York-based artists — one for each letter of the alphabet. On the ninth evening, corresponding with letter I, Storefront’s community gathered outside of Hsieh’s apartment to witness the conclusion of his year-long performance piece. 
 
Please RSVP to join us for this special evening.

 

Tehching Hsieh was born in 1950 in Nan-Chou, Taiwan. Hsieh dropped out from high school in 1967 and took up painting. After finishing compulsory military service (1970-73), Hsieh had his first solo show at the gallery of the American News Bureau in Taiwan. Shortly after this solo show, Hsieh stopped painting. He made a performance action, Jump, in which he broke both of his ankles. He trained as a seaman, which he then used as a means to enter the United States. In July of 1974, Hsieh arrived at a small port near Philadelphia. He was an illegal immigrant in the States for fourteen years until granted amnesty in 1988.    

 

Starting in the late 1970s, Hsieh made five One Year Performances and a Thirteen Year Plan’, inside and outside his studio in New York City. Using long durations, making art and life simultaneous, Hsieh achieved one of the most radical approaches in contemporary art. The first four One Year Performances made Hsieh a regular name in the art scene in New York; the last two pieces, intentionally retreating from the art world, set a tone of sustained invisibility. Since the Millennium, released from the restriction of not showing his works during the thirteen-year period, Hsieh has exhibited his work in North and South America, Asia and Europe. Hsieh recent exhibitions Doing Time was presented by Taiwan Pavilion at 57th Venice Art Biennale 2017, One Year Performance 1980-981 was exhibited at Tate Modern, London, in 2017-2018, and MoMa and Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 2009.

 

Tehching Hsieh lives in Brooklyn, New York.

 

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Support 

Storefront’s 40th Anniversary program is made possible through the support of the Graham Foundation, the Ruth Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; the Storefront Circle and Storefront’s Board of Directors, members, and individual donors.