Wenmin Tong

TONG Wenmin's work often focuses on the intersection between individual perception and the external environment, stimulating visual poetry and inspiring action through behaviors that at first seem counter-intuitive. Through often simplified or regulated movements, her work hints at the allegorical character of the body and action within a semantically rich context.TONG Wenmin (b. 1989, Chongqing, China) received her BFA at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 2012.
TONG has recent solo / duo shows at Macalline Art Center, Beijing; Essence Contemporary Art Museum, Chongqing; OCT Boxes Art Museum, Foshan; WHITE SPACE, Beijing; Thousand Plateau Art Space, Chengdu; Organ Haus Art Space, Chongqing, and recent group shows / art festival at Lillehammer Art Museum, Lillehammer; HE ART MUSEUM, Foshan; OCAT Shenzhen, Shenzhen; By Art Matters, Hangzhou; G Museum, Nanjing; Power Station of Art, Shanghai; Koganecho Area Management Center, Yokohama; Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; HOW Art Museum, Shanghai; NCAF, Beijing; A4 Art Museum, Chengdu; House of Egorn, Berlin; BARRAK, Okinawa; Responding: International Performance Art Festival and Meeting 2018, Tokyo & Fukushima; Adelaide Festival Centre, Adelaide; Petach Tikva Museum of Art, Tel Aviv. She won the Grand Jury Prize of Huayu Youth Award in 2018, the First Prize of the 8th New Star Art Award by Deji Art Museum in 2018, Nomination Prize of The 5th Contemporary Sculpture Award in 2017, the Accolade Artist by Documentaries of Chinese Performance Art in 2016. She has also been selected for The Swiss Arts Council Artists Residency, Switzerland (2021); Offshore Residency, Dinawan Island (2019) and other residencies project. TONG currently works and lives in Chongqing.

I plan to keep doing From South to North project. My project From South to North starts from 2022, and I plan to work on it in the next few years. From South to North project is a long-term, ongoing performative project, with approach based on both research and practice. Through measuring geographical appearance and contour of different regions in China, I experience and absorb local knowledge while visiting various ecological environment and borders, such as rain forests, deserts, glaciers, water systems, mountains, coast lines, country roads and urban areas. Utilizing a cross-disciplinary approach, including performance video, live performance, installation, writing and publication, the project aims to weave together an emotional network of ecological perception and moral of performance. When the human body faces the vast natural space of heaven and earth, the body is very small. I think painting can express the abstract landscape, and there is no need using the body to directly face the landscape. Painting can solve the huge scale and realm of landscape, as well as the connection with human spirit. People can accept the breath of external nature in the closed space made of paper, and human hands and paper become the first scene for the conversion and output of energy, information and emotions. During my stay, I plan to do an action painting and performance related to landscape.