Photo © Tate: Serri
Sharon Hayes reads love letters aloud, bringing private emotions into a public space
This installation In Everything Else Has Failed! Don’t You Think It’s Time For Love? is based on a series of performances from 2007. Hayes was invited to create a work in the lobby of the investment bank UBS in New York City. However, she was more interested in making a project outside the building. Each day she went out onto the street at lunchtime and stood in front of a microphone to read a letter to an unnamed lover. The five speakers in this room play each of those readings in sequence.
The letters do not specify the sexuality of the writer or their lover. For the performances, however, Hayes has said that she ‘butched myself up even more than usual because I didn’t want the love to be read as heteronormative.’
These are highly emotional letters. They reflect the speaker’s feelings of dislocation during the US war in Iraq. She is angry with her government, but there is also a sense that anxieties and arguments about the war are driving her apart from her lover. Increasingly passionate and imploring, she talks of love and yearning, fearing that her lover may not hear her words. She frequently calls out to a ‘you’. As listeners, we can feel that the words are addressed to us. Hayes has described the performance as ‘trying to reach someone specific by shoutinginto the wind, so to speak.’
Ma Liuming, Fen Ma Liuming 1993
This is one of a group of gelatin silver prints in the Tate collection documenting performances by the Chinese artist Ma Liuming. Many of the performances took place in the Dongcun artists’ colony of Beijing East Village in the early 1990s. Ma joined the colony in 1993 having been active as one of the originators of modern performance art in China since the late 1980s. This photograph, taken in 1993 by the artist Xu Zhiwei, shows Ma Liuming turning into Fen-Ma Liuming, his feminine alter-ego and a character he would adopt in a number of subsequent performances. Here he is shown wearing a flowery dress, chiffon scarf and large earrings, while a pair of hands to the right of the image appear to help with the transformation. Other images (see Tate P81262 and P81264) also show Ma being assisted with his hair and make-up as he becomes Fen-Ma. In 1999 Ma described his alternative artistic persona: ‘Fen-Ma Liuming is the character that I have been constantly enacting in my performances for the past few years and whose characteristics are an effeminate face and a body of a man’ (quoted in Marella Gallery 2007, p.9).
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artworks in Sharon Hayes
Ma Liuming, Fen Ma Liuming’s Lunch I 1994
This is one of a group of gelatin silver prints in the Tate collection documenting performances by the Chinese artist Ma Liuming. Many of the performances took place in the Dongcun artists’ colony of Beijing East Village in the early 1990s. Ma joined the colony in 1993, having been active as one of the originators of modern performance art in China since the late 1980s. In his performances Ma adopted an androgynous alter-ego whom he called Fen-Ma Liuming, dressing up in women’s clothes and wearing make-up. He described this alternative artistic persona as ‘the character that I have been constantly enacting in my performances for the past few years and whose characteristics are an effeminate face and a body of a man’ (quoted in Marella Gallery 2007, p.9).
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artworks in Sharon Hayes
RongRong, 1994 No. 11 (Zhang Huan) 1994
This photograph is from a portfolio of forty-four individual original black and white photographs, taken, printed and sequenced by the Chinese photographer RongRong (see Tate P82585–P82628). RongRong was an integral member of the group of artists who lived and worked in the Beijing East Village – an artist’s commune that was informally established between 1993 and 1994 in Dashan Zhuang, an area near the Third Ring Road of Beijing. The images record performances carried out by members of Beijing East Village and are characterised by a snapshot aesthetic which alludes to the intimacy and spontaneity with which the photographs were made on an analogue 35mm film SLR camera. The title of each of the prints refers to the year in which the performance was staged. The collective’s most concentrated period of activity lasted for just over two years, from early 1993 until May 1995. Its membership comprised around fifteen individual artists who went on to receive international attention and acclaim – some of the most notable amongst them being Zhang Huan (born 1965), Ma Liuming (born 1969), Zhu Ming (born 1972), Duan Yingmei (born 1969), Cang Xin (born 1967) and RongRong.
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artworks in Sharon Hayes
RongRong, 1994 No. 15 (Zhang Huan, ‘12 Square Metres’) 1994
This photograph is from a portfolio of forty-four individual original black and white photographs, taken, printed and sequenced by the Chinese photographer RongRong (see Tate P82585–P82628). RongRong was an integral member of the group of artists who lived and worked in the Beijing East Village – an artist’s commune that was informally established between 1993 and 1994 in Dashan Zhuang, an area near the Third Ring Road of Beijing. The images record performances carried out by members of Beijing East Village and are characterised by a snapshot aesthetic which alludes to the intimacy and spontaneity with which the photographs were made on an analogue 35mm film SLR camera. The title of each of the prints refers to the year in which the performance was staged. The collective’s most concentrated period of activity lasted for just over two years, from early 1993 until May 1995. Its membership comprised around fifteen individual artists who went on to receive international attention and acclaim – some of the most notable amongst them being Zhang Huan (born 1965), Ma Liuming (born 1969), Zhu Ming (born 1972), Duan Yingmei (born 1969), Cang Xin (born 1967) and RongRong.
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artworks in Sharon Hayes
RongRong, 1994 No. 18 (Zhang Huan, ‘12 Square Metres’) 1994
This photograph is from a portfolio of forty-four individual original black and white photographs, taken, printed and sequenced by the Chinese photographer RongRong (see Tate P82585–P82628). RongRong was an integral member of the group of artists who lived and worked in the Beijing East Village – an artist’s commune that was informally established between 1993 and 1994 in Dashan Zhuang, an area near the Third Ring Road of Beijing. The images record performances carried out by members of Beijing East Village and are characterised by a snapshot aesthetic which alludes to the intimacy and spontaneity with which the photographs were made on an analogue 35mm film SLR camera. The title of each of the prints refers to the year in which the performance was staged. The collective’s most concentrated period of activity lasted for just over two years, from early 1993 until May 1995. Its membership comprised around fifteen individual artists who went on to receive international attention and acclaim – some of the most notable amongst them being Zhang Huan (born 1965), Ma Liuming (born 1969), Zhu Ming (born 1972), Duan Yingmei (born 1969), Cang Xin (born 1967) and RongRong.
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artworks in Sharon Hayes
RongRong, 1994 No. 85 (Zhu Ming) 1994
This photograph is from a portfolio of forty-four individual original black and white photographs, taken, printed and sequenced by the Chinese photographer RongRong (see Tate P82585–P82628). RongRong was an integral member of the group of artists who lived and worked in the Beijing East Village – an artist’s commune that was informally established between 1993 and 1994 in Dashan Zhuang, an area near the Third Ring Road of Beijing. The images record performances carried out by members of Beijing East Village and are characterised by a snapshot aesthetic which alludes to the intimacy and spontaneity with which the photographs were made on an analogue 35mm film SLR camera. The title of each of the prints refers to the year in which the performance was staged. The collective’s most concentrated period of activity lasted for just over two years, from early 1993 until May 1995. Its membership comprised around fifteen individual artists who went on to receive international attention and acclaim – some of the most notable amongst them being Zhang Huan (born 1965), Ma Liuming (born 1969), Zhu Ming (born 1972), Duan Yingmei (born 1969), Cang Xin (born 1967) and RongRong.
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artworks in Sharon Hayes
RongRong, 1995 No. 6 (Zhang Huan, ‘Primordial Sounds’) 1995
This photograph is from a portfolio of forty-four individual original black and white photographs, taken, printed and sequenced by the Chinese photographer RongRong (see Tate P82585–P82628). RongRong was an integral member of the group of artists who lived and worked in the Beijing East Village – an artist’s commune that was informally established between 1993 and 1994 in Dashan Zhuang, an area near the Third Ring Road of Beijing. The images record performances carried out by members of Beijing East Village and are characterised by a snapshot aesthetic which alludes to the intimacy and spontaneity with which the photographs were made on an analogue 35mm film SLR camera. The title of each of the prints refers to the year in which the performance was staged. The collective’s most concentrated period of activity lasted for just over two years, from early 1993 until May 1995. Its membership comprised around fifteen individual artists who went on to receive international attention and acclaim – some of the most notable amongst them being Zhang Huan (born 1965), Ma Liuming (born 1969), Zhu Ming (born 1972), Duan Yingmei (born 1969), Cang Xin (born 1967) and RongRong.
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artworks in Sharon Hayes
RongRong, 1995 No. 9 (Zhang Huan, ‘Primordial Sounds’) 1995
This photograph is from a portfolio of forty-four individual original black and white photographs, taken, printed and sequenced by the Chinese photographer RongRong (see Tate P82585–P82628). RongRong was an integral member of the group of artists who lived and worked in the Beijing East Village – an artist’s commune that was informally established between 1993 and 1994 in Dashan Zhuang, an area near the Third Ring Road of Beijing. The images record performances carried out by members of Beijing East Village and are characterised by a snapshot aesthetic which alludes to the intimacy and spontaneity with which the photographs were made on an analogue 35mm film SLR camera. The title of each of the prints refers to the year in which the performance was staged. The collective’s most concentrated period of activity lasted for just over two years, from early 1993 until May 1995. Its membership comprised around fifteen individual artists who went on to receive international attention and acclaim – some of the most notable amongst them being Zhang Huan (born 1965), Ma Liuming (born 1969), Zhu Ming (born 1972), Duan Yingmei (born 1969), Cang Xin (born 1967) and RongRong.
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artworks in Sharon Hayes
RongRong, 1995 No. 42 (Zhang Huan, Ma Liuming, ‘Third Contact’) 1995
This photograph is from a portfolio of forty-four individual original black and white photographs, taken, printed and sequenced by the Chinese photographer RongRong (see Tate P82585–P82628). RongRong was an integral member of the group of artists who lived and worked in the Beijing East Village – an artist’s commune that was informally established between 1993 and 1994 in Dashan Zhuang, an area near the Third Ring Road of Beijing. The images record performances carried out by members of Beijing East Village and are characterised by a snapshot aesthetic which alludes to the intimacy and spontaneity with which the photographs were made on an analogue 35mm film SLR camera. The title of each of the prints refers to the year in which the performance was staged. The collective’s most concentrated period of activity lasted for just over two years, from early 1993 until May 1995. Its membership comprised around fifteen individual artists who went on to receive international attention and acclaim – some of the most notable amongst them being Zhang Huan (born 1965), Ma Liuming (born 1969), Zhu Ming (born 1972), Duan Yingmei (born 1969), Cang Xin (born 1967) and RongRong.
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Art in this room
Ma Liuming
Fen Ma Liuming
1993
Sorry, no image available
Xing Danwen
A Personal Diary: Dou Wei
1996
Sorry, no image available
Xing Danwen
A Personal Diary: Jin Xing I
1996
Sorry, no image available
Xing Danwen
A Personal Diary: Chen Kaige & Gong Li
1995
Sorry, no image available
Xing Danwen
A Personal Diary: Leslie Cheung
1995
Sorry, no image available
Xing Danwen
A Personal Diary: Beijing II
1995
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