Tzu-Tung Lee (SMACT ’22) is one of the curators for Sensefield Biennale 2023. The exhibition runs March 2 – April 13, 2023.
Audiences welcome, and be warned: this exhibit will challenge you.
Hold on for Dear Life: Relationships in Uncertain Times asks: What do we hold on to when our worlds are in flux? Between the COVID-19 pandemic, mounting geopolitical crises, and ongoing climate destruction, the future seems increasingly unstable. With so much out of our control it can be tempting to cut ties, turn inwards, and rely only on ourselves. This exhibition challenges this. The curators propose that in times of great uncertainty, it is our relationships – with ourselves, with human and non-human others, and with the landscapes and temporalities we inhabit – that will enable us to adapt and survive.
Sensefield 感野 is a biennial exhibition that addresses contemporary issues through experimental ethnographic art. The 2023 curatorial theme plays with the phrase HODL, a mantra among crypto enthusiasts denoting a long-term approach to investing, which takes us to the intersection of art, anthropology, finance, and technology. This show brings together artists who work with lost sounds, edible viruses, virtual sanctuaries of mourning, and computer gardening, blockchain politics, and healing histories. Their projects offer hope and possibility, but also hold inescapable perils, challenges, and contradictions.
Throughout March and April, there will be an online exhibition and a series of art workshops and training clinics. Each week you will encounter new ways to use digital technologies to create, sustain, and re-imagine a diverse network of relations. You will meet artists and experts who ask you to creatively re-imagine your own relationships and responsibilities, and think critically about what it means to be in a community with others. Their hope is that in the course of these sessions, we will activate relationships that extend beyond the exhibit, providing community and companionship as we work together to craft better futures.
Tzu-Tung Lee (ze/zir) is a curator and a political artist from Taiwan. Combining anthropological field research and political activism, zir projects explore how one survives and negotiates autonomy with multiple forms of political, gender, and illness identities. Surfing between video, installation, web art, and performance art forms, Tzu-Tung often introduces participatory methods in zir works and invites participants as collective creators to test and decolonize the contemporary form of art, technology, and authorities.
Tzu-Tung has an MS from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), an MFA with a full merit scholarship from the School of Art Institute of Chicago, and a BS from the National Taiwan University, Agricultural Economics department. Zir’s artworks have been exhibited globally, including MOCA Taipei, C-Lab (TW), MIT Museum, Cuchifritos Gallery, Stanford University, Tom Robbinson Gallery (US), Lisbon University (PT), ArtScape(CA), Transmidale(DE), ADL(SK), among others. Tzu-Tung is also an organizer for several of Taiwan’s Indigenous and gender movements, the founder of an artist-technologist collaborative NPO, and the curator of art and anthropology exhibitions.
