Dominique Fung's High Line Performance, "A Leaf’s Pilgrimage"

Dominique Fung excavates our collective inheritance of tradition, memory, and legacy, unearthing and liberating overlooked figures, misunderstood artifacts, and forgotten stories. Her work considers Orientalist fantasies, particularly as they relate to the sexualization, fetishization, and objectification of Asian women. Fung plays with this conflation between woman and thing in her paintings and sculptures, imbuing inanimate objects—artifacts, teapots, fishing rods, and food—with agency and nuance. Her canvases are portals into spectral scenes that lean into the uncanny, reversing the power dynamic of the gaze and orchestrating a confrontation between object and viewer.

For the High Line, Dominique Fung presents A Leaf’s Pilgrimage, her first live performance commission. Building on recurring motifs in her practice, the piece is a moving tableau—a poetic and, at times, absurdist journey through the life of a tea leaf. Guided by two characters, the solemn and surreal Guide and their deadpan foil, the Guide’s Assistant, the audience is led across the Diller – von Furstenberg Sundeck. Along the way, the audience is a witness to the tea’s transformation: from tender growth and harvest, to withering, oxidizing, drying, preservation, and ultimately tasting. Throughout, the audience unwittingly partakes in a voyeuristic exchange similar to those portrayed, subverted, and reclaimed by Fung in her paintings and sculptures.

Despite spanning centuries of history, technological advances, and evolving gender roles, Fung’s script reveals the immutable cultural significance and tradition inherent in the production of tea. A Leaf’s Pilgrimage concludes with “Wrapped for the World,” a poignant scene depicting the packaging and farewell of the tea leaves. The Guide reverently prepares parcels, assigning them grand names and viewing each as a "time capsule" and a "letter written in chlorophyll." The play ends with a quiet reflection on the small leaf that carries "entire worlds inside them."

Artist Bio

Dominique Fung (b. 1987, Ottawa, Canada) lives and works in New York, NY. She has held solo exhibitions at institutions including ICA SF, San Francisco, CA (2026) (forthcoming); Rockefeller Center, New York, NY (2023); and Pond Society, Shanghai, China (2022). Her work has been featured in major international group exhibitions including Where the Real Lies, Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Ogunquit, ME (2025); Spirit House, Cantor Arts Center, Stanford, CA (2024); Day for Night: New American Realism, Galleria Nazionali di Arte Antica, Rome, Italy (2024); I’m Not Afraid of Ghosts, Palazzo Tiepolo Passi, Venice, Italy (2024); Full Disclosure: Selections from the Thomas-Suwall Collection, Plains Art Museum, Fargo, ND (2024); Women of Now: Dialogues of Identity, Memory and Place, Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, TX (2022); My Secret Garden, Asia Art Center, Taipei, Taiwan (2021); SITE: Michigan Central Station, Library Street Collective, Detroit, MI (2021); Friends and Friends of Friends: Artistic Communities in the Age of Social Media, Schlossmuseum, Linz, Austria (2020); Barmecide Feast, The 14th Factory, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC (2018); and among many others. Fung’s work is included in the collections of the M+, K11 Art Foundation, Pond Society, Yuz Foundation, Aïshti Foundation, Cantor Art Center of Stanford University, East West Bank Collection, Hammer Museum, High Museum of Art, ICA Miami, LACMA, LA MoCA, The Huntington Library, among others.

Accessibility

We encourage all persons with disabilities to attend. To request additional information regarding accessibility or accommodations at a program, please contact [email protected]. Program venues are accessible via wheelchair, and ASL interpretation can be arranged two weeks in advance.

What happens if it rains?

In the case of inclement weather, the event will be moved to the rain date of Sunday, September 7 or moved to the 14th Street Passage at 14th Street and 10th Avenue. We will add a note to the website by noon on the day of the original event and email all registered participants.

Support

Lead support for High Line Art comes from Amanda and Don Mullen. Major support is provided by Shelley Fox Aarons and Philip E. Aarons, The Brown Foundation, Inc., and Charina Endowment Fund.

High Line Art is supported, in part, with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council, under the leadership of Speaker Adrienne Adams.

Photo Caption

Dominique Fung, A Tale of Ancestral Memories, 2023. Photo by Andrea Rossetti. Courtesy MASSIMODECARLO.

Host or Publisher High Line Art