May 27 - June 27
Location: Various bus shelters, ION stations, and billboards throughout Waterloo Region and Cambridge

Chun Hua Catherine Dong presents “I Have Been There,” an on-going public intervention performance that explores belonging, diaspora, and existence in public spaces. Each time Dong travels to a new place, she creates a beautiful duvet with Chinese traditional embroidered silk fabric. Covered by the duvet, she lies on the ground in front of historical sites, landmarks, tourist attractions, and other significant places or events around the world. She repeats this performance as a poetic expression of her diasporic identity and engagement with different cultures and spaces. Working within the gap between body as image and body as experienced reality, Dong uses her body as a primary material in her work, creating visual narratives that enable audiences to experience performance unexpectedly and directly in public spaces. She started this performance in 2015, and has performed in 15 countries, 33 cities, and over 250 different sites.

About the artist

Chun Hua Catherine Dong is a Chinese-born Montreal-based visual artist working with performance, photography, and video. She received a BFA from Emily Carr University Art & Design and MFA from Concordia University in Canada. She has performed in multiple international performance art festivals and venues around the world.

Image: Chun Hua Catherine Dong, I Have Been There (2015 - Ongoing), Installation view: Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost, Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener + Area (CAFKA), 2021. Photo: Conan Stark.