Guitar Waltz [公公 - Goong Goong]
video, performed by Annie and her mother
5 minutes

I explore past and present familial and cultural experience by enacting my late Taiwanese grandfather. Set to a modest guitar waltz strum by my mother (who learned to play the tune as a child), I perform an elegant sequence of gestures, drawing from family-curated objects, attire and memories of childhood interactions with a family patriarch. This is my mother and my rhythmic meditation on culture and life in post-war, middle-class Taipei, weaving a quixotic portrait of Goong Goong, the ‘Grandfather’, a life interpreted by a granddaughter’s brief encounter.

exhibition history:

UNTAPPED, The Artist Project, 2011 (Toronto, Canada); Donor’s Evening, University of Toronto Scarborough (Canada)