Artist-in-Residence Alison Kuo presents "A flame latches to a bit of straw"

Artist Alison Kuo presents A flame latches to a bit of straw, a new performance work drawing on the 400-year-old traditions of Cantonese Opera. Reinterpreting the form as a visual artist, she stages her discovery of an art practiced by her family in Hong Kong before they immigrated to the United States. With a cast of performers ranging from Cantonese Opera professionals to artist-friends, mentors, and local musicians, Kuo moves both inside and outside of a tradition carried across generations and continents.
As the culmination of Kuo’s residency at the New Museum, the performance features sculptural sets and costumes built in the Museum’s on-site artist studio using materials sourced from the nearby shops and streets of Manhattan’s Chinatown. These pieces extend Kuo’s sculptural practice into a theatrical environment, combining opera traditions with her exuberant aesthetic of built-up decoration and found materials. Headpieces are adorned with toy ponies, ceramic dogs sourced from thrift stores sport glittery stick-on nails, a warrior’s armor is studded with sequins.
The sets and costumes provide a backdrop for songs that take up operatic themes: epic journeys, loss, and, ultimately, reunion and belonging. In a duet from the opera Unfinished Love and Hatred in the Phoenix Pavilion, a princess finds herself in a strange land, having lost her memory and her ability to communicate. In the culminating number, performers sing “We’ll Meet Again,” the 1939 English song made famous by Vera Lynn, translated into Cantonese. Here, themes of parting and eventual reunion take on new meaning through translation. They speak to experiences of political upheaval and migration in Kuo’s family and across Chinese American communities.
Learn more and get tickets: https://www.newmuseum.org/event/10-22-2026/