Performance drawing.
Duration: 50mins
Performed on 6 March 2019 as part of Being Present, a live programme curated by Annie Jael Kwan that was in response to the exhibition Speech Acts: Reflection - Imagination - Repetition, curated by Hammad Nasar with Kate Jeson at Manchester Art Gallery; also performed at SEA Currents Festival at Raven Row, London UK on 8 March 2019, Young Blood Initiative’s The Infinite Wheel of Time exhibition, London UK on 6 July 2019 and at Eastside Projects, Birmingham UK on 2 August 2019.
ACTION: The artist continuously draws a large circle around her with graphite in one movement and subsequently erases it. She does this 26 times after which she gathers the rubber shavings to form a point on the spot where the centre of the circle once was.
Using the simple gestures of drawing and erasing, the artist contemplates on legacy and disappearance, the significance of holding on to and letting go of, what remains and what is lost. This work is a tribute to the artists Li Yuan Chia, drawing from his life, his concept of all and nothing and the point as the origin and end of creation. Each circle marks a year of Li’s life spent in Cumbria, where he remained until his death in 1994. The repetitive action enables a kind of remembering, remembering Li Yuan Chia, connecting to him in another point in time.
26 x 2 = 0, an online translation of this work, was created as part of the Asia-Art-Activism cover collaboration with the British Art Studies Journal Issue 13: London, Asia, Exhibitions, Histories, edited by Hammad Nasar and Sarah Victoria Turner, published by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, and the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, September 2019, UK.
In 2020, Bettina reimagined this performance drawing into a piece of live art on Google Docs, please click here for more information.
Photography by Andrew Brooks, courtesy of Manchester Art Gallery.