Performance by Irene June: Grandson Monkey Awakened by the Space (Emptiness)

Join us for an in-gallery performance by artist Irene June. June will engage his wearable sculpture work as meditation on the weight of grief as an ancestral inheritance. This performance will bring the audience into a world of ancient Chinese folklore and transgender survival. The performance will be a wedding, a birthday, a funeral. Hand-cast bronze bells will ring in ritual, as June becomes the bell and the prayer. The duration of the performance is approximately 25 minutes.  
 

Masks are strongly encouraged. 
 

Using sculpture, Irene June invites the audience to engage in a personal narrative of diasporic reconciliation and healing. His current work explores the spine as a physical protector of the self, our connection to heaven, and as a grounding site for unwavering self worship. Through a material research based practice, each sculpture becomes a visualization of transgender and Taiwanese-American cultural survival. June is a recent MFA graduate in Sculpture at UT Austin and a recipient of the College of Fine Arts Academic Excellence Continuing Fellowship Award in 2023. He has been featured in The Daily Texan, Oregon ArtsWatch, and Oregon Quarterly, and has exhibited in solo and group shows in Portland and Eugene, OR; Seattle, WA; and most recently Austin, Texas.