Solo Exhibition by YunRay Chung September 25th – October 1st, 2021
Performance and Opening Reception: Saturday, September 25th, from 1-4 pm
Local Project is pleased to present “Farewell to Myself”, a solo exhibition by Queens-based performance artist and sustainable fashion designer YunRay Chung. Featuring a live performance on the day of the opening reception, a short documentation film of another performance “Laundry Service”, and wearable art pieces, the show will explore the artist’s interpretation and impression of living, aging and dying in this day and time, after the traumatic global pandemic we all experienced in the past year and a half.
Inspired by the Japanese traditional craft of kintsugi, (金継ぎ, “golden joinery”), and the “Buried Dresses” by Hussein Chalayan. The idea behind the show is to explore the idea of linking aging to imperfection and linking the death to the end. The exhibition will examine what beauty can come from aging, and what human existence can bring to the world, even after death.
“Farewell to Myself” is a two-hour performance piece, following a week-long exhibition. The performance will consist of a long see-through container with soil in it, and YunRay, the performer, will bury a whole set of outfits and perform a traditional Buddhist funeral with chanting and prayer. After the performance, the container will remain in the space for a week, and the clothes will be processed and changed in the soil and dug up by the end of the week to be tried on.
This performance is using the set of outfits to represent the artist, and by burying himself, we can re-think the meaning of being alive and what impact we are leaving on the earth, even after our death. It is to question the meaning of existence for humankind and reflect the environmental impacts we are doing to the planet.
The other part of the exhibition will consist of a documentation film from a previous performance, “Laundry Service”, and a few fashion art pieces coming from this performance. The performance is about washing clothing, breaking them in the process, and mending them back with gold thread and paint. Aging is like laundry, as human beings, we strive and work hard every day, but time is like water, slowly breaking our skin and hair, however, instead of hiding these markings of time or trying to reverse them, we can highlight these moments as beauty.
YunRay graduated with an MFA from the Fashion Institute of Technology in 2019. His work was featured in Al-Tiba9, No-Kill, Hue, and Artqol magazines. He has shown his work at New York Fashion Week, Flux Factory and more.
Recently, YunRay was chosen as a recipient of the City Artist Corps Grants for this particular performance piece “Farewell to Myself”.