Good Mourning

A performance that unmoors the site of imperial violence from its fixed location in time and space and transforms the grieving experience into a communal experience through foodmaking and foodsharing. Seven Chinese artists and organizers spent four days living, cooking, eating, and working together in Burns Piñon Reserve, during which they made ceramics of poems and texts that are censored in China. They also performed a ritual of ‘memory-funeral’ through smashing and burying their ceramic works. The work creates a space to channel their rage into art, and to explore collective mourning that is not just rooted in pain, but also humor and love. Through the breaking of clay/ceramic objects, the work shatters the confines that patriarchy, capitalism and racism placed on performers' bodies.