Akeroyd Collection

  • Artists
  • Works
  • Programme
  • Archive
  • News
  • FAQ
  • Information
  • Search

Akeroyd Collection

Works

Kang Seung Lee, The Heart of A Hand, 2023

a digital image of hands drawn by the artist Martin Wong float in white space
an image of a shirtless person standing in a black space with their arm over their face.
a digital image of hands drawn by the artist Martin Wong are lined up in a row in white space. The text 'the heart of a hand' is visible underneath the hands.
a dancer who is wearing brown leggings leaps in the air in a darkened space
a dancer who is wearing brown leggings spins in a darkened space. Purple light is cast on their body.
a dance walks towards the camera in a darkened space
Installation view of The Heart of a hand in a darkened space. The image projected is of a shirtless person standing in a black space with their arm over their face.
Installation view of The Heart of a Hand in a darkened space
Installation view of The Heart of a Hand in a darkened space
Video Player is loading.
Current Time 0:00
/
Duration 0:00
Loaded: 0%
0:00
Stream Type LIVE
Remaining Time -0:00
 
1x
    • Chapters
    • descriptions off, selected
    • captions settings, opens captions settings dialog
    • captions off, selected
    • English Captions

      This is a modal window.

      Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window.

      Text
      Text Background
      Caption Area Background
      Font Size
      Text Edge Style
      Font Family

      End of dialog window.

      The Heart of A Hand pays tribute to Goh Choo San (1948–1987), a pioneering Singaporean-born choreographer who died of an AIDS-related illness at the age of thirty-nine. Goh Choo San choreographed and performed for prominent ballet companies throughout Asia, Europe, and North America during his lifetime, and yet his legacy remains largely absent from queer, cultural, and dance histories in the United States. In an act of radical archiving, Kang Seung Lee redresses this history by manifesting a queer futurity across different relations and histories of solidarity. The single-channel video, created in collaboration with Joshua Serafin and Nathan Mercury Kim is a piece of choreographed dance for camera, loosely based on Goh’s neo-classical ballet, Configurations, commissioned by American Ballet Theatre in 1981. In the work, we see Serafin, a Filipina dancer and choreographer based in Belgium, who embodies an exuberant spectrum of emotions reflected in the intensity of the dance. KIRARA, a transgender composer and musician based in Seoul, takes inspiration from the original score for Goh’s Configurations, to create a revitalized soundtrack for queer life in the contemporary moment. The Heart of A Hand derives its name from a poem by Mexican writer Xavier Villaurrutia (1903–1950). And in a final element of this trans-disciplinary project, several passages by Villaurrutia and other artists of Goh’s generation, appear in different forms alongside other artefacts laid on the performance floor. Each text is transcribed into a font that draws direct inspiration from the distinctive hand illustrations that feature so frequently in the paintings of artist Martin Wong (1946–1999). This is a conscientious conflation of time, place, culture, and modes of address. Yet, from the archival material, text, dance and music, a polyvocal approach is able to lend a convincing remedial quality to normative histories - histories that almost certainly overlooked marginalised perspectives and personal experiences that were crucial to the historic struggles for change.

      MediumSingle-channel 4K video, colour, sound
      Duration13 minutes 13 seconds
      Editionof 5 + 2 APs
      Previous, Next
      Related pages to Kang Seung Lee:

      Artist Page

      Kang Seung Lee

      Works

      • The Heart of A Hand, 2023

      • Garden, 2018

      First Light

      First Light

      Nikita GaleApichatpong Weerasethakul
      12.16.2024–03.19.2025
      Screening
      Writing A Play (dark blue orchard)

      Writing A Play (dark blue orchard)

      Helen Marten
      12.16.2024–03.19.2025
      Screening
      Picket Line of the Intellect, Discotheque of the Will

      Picket Line of the Intellect, Discotheque of the Will

      Evan Ifekoya
      12.16.2024–03.19.2025
      Screening