Hai-Wen Lin: Orientation (September 5th - February 8th)

Orientation was originally conceived by Hai-Wen Lin in 2021, when it was performed by the artist with their collaborator Charlie Thornton. For this commission, Lin and Thornton have reimagined the performance piece as a video projection for CAM’s facade as a part of the museum’s ongoing Street Views series.

In Orientation, two performers respond to a series of spoken commands which appear in the video’s subtitles. Across this 61-foot wide projection, this larger-than-life pair of bodies grapples, engages, accommodates, and supports one another. This interaction fuses the popular party game Twister with the Chinese practice of feng shui, which strives to create harmony between people and their surroundings through the strategic arrangements of objects in space. 

In Twister, players compete to be the last person balanced on rows of red, yellow, blue, and green dots on a large plastic mat while they receive and respond to instructions like “Left hand,…