Sounding/BODY: Grown From the Same Stem, The Cord Still Hums

Doors at 6:30pm

Tickets:

$10 Student - use code STUDENT at checkout

(Valid Student ID will be requested at the door)

$10 IMSS Members Presale - use code IMSSMEMBER at checkout

(Valid IMSS Membership card will be requested at door)

$15 GA Presale

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$15 Student & IMSS Members (With valid ID & Membership Card) at Door

$20 GA at Door

Grown From the Same Stem, The Cord Still Hums centers on a long green fabric tube that eventually fills the gallery space, connecting two flower sculptures. The tube references both a shared stem and an umbilical cord: the oldest bond between two bodies, present before language, before memory, before separation, and the origin of all distance that follows. The artist wears a large flower headpiece, beginning wrapped near the second flower, from which her mother's voice emanates, humming a Chinese song she taught the artist in childhood, recorded over a video call across an ocean. At times the recording falters. Lag and interference are introduced into the mother's voice, and the sonic texture of distance is made audible. Over the course of the performance, the recorded voice transforms, becoming mixed with versions of itself, sounds of oceans, fragments of childhood, and ambient sounds from her mother's environment in Beijing.

Over the course of an hour, the artist slowly unravels the tube, while it fills the room with the material weight of distance. The further she moves, the harder it becomes to hear her mother's sound, and the more the room fills with the tube. At the furthest point, when she becomes completely unraveled, she sings the same song back, loudly, across the full length of the space, attempting to return through voice what the body can no longer cross. The audience is invited to step into the space which is being filled with the tube, becoming a part of the performance, each body bringing another presence the cord must move through and around.

This project is partially supported by a CityArts Grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events.

The International Museum of Surgical Science acknowledges support from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.

is an interdisciplinary artist who creates wearable sculptures, paintings, and collages that become transformed through film, sound, live performance, and installation. In her soundscapes, voices are layered and multiplied until they become their own wordless orchestra, slightly out of sync, and never quite resolving. These uncanny choruses are a form of protection: the stories of those she works with are held inside the sound but never made fully readable. The hum carries without exposing-in plurality, we become free.

Her wearable sculptures invite adult bodies into the logic of childhood play, understanding play as an intentional act of vulnerability, allowing adults to reclaim the right to feel. Qi is an MFA candidate in Performance at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and holds a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis. She has presented over 35 wearable artworks in the Link Auditorium and Holmes Lounge, and has been supported by the Jeffrey Frank Wacks Scholarship. This year her work will appear at No Nation Art Lab and 33 East Washington Gallery, preceding her performance at the International Museum of Surgical Science.

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