Performers: Saori Hala and Nobutaka Shomura

The images of the Pietà in Christian iconography usually depict Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus. In Chong’s duo piece pietas, a woman and a man are holding each other in turn according to the gestures of iconic biblical images – from Michelangelo’s Pietà to Käthe Kollwitz’s Mother with her Dead Son –, except that the person who is held keeps his or her eyes open and cries in silence: This way, the artist reverses the act of lamentation and offers a powerful reflection about individual and collective compassion vis-a-vis time and history.

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