Kexin Hao
Kexin Hao is a visual artist whose practice spans design and performance. In her works, she often draws on archetypes from pop culture, such as aerobic workouts, video games, and puppet theater, aiming to create playful, participatory and site-specific experiences for her audience. Growing up in socialist Beijing, where she spent ten years as a student “commissioner of publicity,” she developed a critical interest in propaganda as a tension within graphic design and performance. Her recent work explores the human body in relation to political propaganda.
“Revolution Is a Dinner Party is a puppet performance reimagining Mao Zedong’s phrase, “Revolution is not a dinner party,” as an invitation to reflect on food and inter-species intimacy. The play stages an afterlife dialogue between a sparrow and a rat. Drawing from Mao’s Smash Sparrows campaign and the Great Hanoi Rat Massacre, the two debate class conflicts. A silverfish interrupts, revealing that all three characters are parts of one body and guiding them toward a revolution in which boundaries between self and others dissolve through the act of eating.
In this new work, I focus on the entanglement of the human body, pests, hygiene campaigns, and colonial sanitation efforts. This year, I experimented with new media, including theater, music, and large-scale painting.”
Costume design: Vincent Wong & Laura Snijders
Picture by: Kaspars Teilans