Performance drawing with improvised drumming by Gary and Edgar from Community Drumming CIC.
Performed at ALTAR|NATIVE group exhibition on 4 November 2023 at Ugly Duck, London
Duration: 15mins
Land As Anchor is a performance drawing that was first developed for Stateless Minds Art Festival: Bodies of Knowledge at Pera+ Flora+ Fauna, a collateral event at the Venice Biennale in 2022 (set up by Jambatan and curated by Annie Jael Kwan, Jo-Lene Ong and Amir Zainorin). It is inspired by the belief and history of the worshipping of 土地公 (TuDi Gong), a Chinese deity that was often brought along with by Chinese migrants for protection in the new land. The performance draws from this history and belief as a way of thinking about migrants’ diasporic relationship to land - the land they or their parents/grandparents migrated to and the ancestral homeland that was left behind.
A makeshift TuDi Gong tablet, created for the performance, was placed outside the gallery with clementine and incense offerings.
TuDi Gong, translated as the Earth/Land god or Lord of the soil and the ground, is a ubiquitous and commonly worshipped deity in Chinese religions. He is a guardian of a locality and the human communities that live on it, who protects as well as brings wealth. He has been worshiped in China since ancient times, originally as a way to revere and appreciate the land. Because of his name TuDi 土地 (straight translation: soil 土 ground 地, meaning earth or land), he is often introduced as the Chinese god of agriculture but that is only partially accurate. In fact, TuDi Gong signifies the relationship between human and the land/place/environment in which they inhabit. As a deity that migrant Chinese often brought along with to protect them in the new land, where his shrine usually placed outside the house by the front door, TuDi Gong is also connected to demarcating and sacralising local settlements, neighbourhoods and communal spaces of the migrant Chinese communities.
The Chinese character 社 that was inscribed in the artwork means community and in ancient times was used to refer to TuDiGong (社神). I am drawn to how this character links the land with people. Land could be considered as an anchor, a marker of permanence and TuDi Gong stands for a sense of stability, of security, of identity as well as of community and of belonging. With land there was always hope of rejuvenation and recuperation.
“The land knows you even when you are lost.” (from Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer).
Photography and video stills by Matt Tam and Justin Fung.
Photographs of the drawing and details:
