Night School NO.59 | Body As My Dicourse Of Resistanse

Artist Haili Sun has spent decades living and creating in the Eurasian region. The era in which he was born and the experiences he has encountered have shaped his existence as a “temporary nomad” wherever he goes. This may align with his innate refusal to belong to any culture, identity, region, or even time—a “neutral soul.” As the artist himself puts it, he is akin to the kind of person described in Gabriel García Márquez’s magical realist narratives—someone who struggles desperately to break free from the rigid shell confining them.

In Haili Sun’s artistic career, compared to mediums like installation and painting, he began using the body as a medium relatively late, with a certain sense of reluctance. However, through continuous experimentation, he discovered the irresistible allure of bodily expression. From the spiritual to the visual, and even the direct sensory reflection of bodily injury, it acts like a gravitational force, evoking temporal and spatial empathy with the audience. This gives rise to vivid scenes of individuals striving to take a deep breath in absurd and dire circumstances, adopting awkward postures. Furthermore, bodily expression is not only used to resist the constraints of survival space but also serves as a powerful tool to counteract the artist’s own weakened linguistic expression.

Today, faced with the concentrated gravity of anxiety and entertainment-driven chaos in a compressed environment, the artist seeks to use the physical wear and tear of the body, particularly the unpredictable energy arising from the juxtaposition of the body and the environment, to touch upon the true image of society’s “core essence.” This differs from the language and form of expression in the artist’s works created during their European phase. The temporary reflections of the body in the site, along with the symbolic dialogue it engages in, continuously expand in their transmission of energy.

In performance art, whether the artist uses the display of the body as a defense against environmental erosion or creates physical pain as a form of resistance, he maintains a critical and independent stance toward reality. This may be the artist’s own stubborn insistence on the attributes of his work, hoping they possess a raw, rugged quality while evoking the vivid, trembling, uneasy, and wandering emotions of reality, alienation, contempt, and non-cooperation…

The sharing session will consist of two parts: the first stage of early works primarily involves the linguistic transformation of the relationship between nature and the non-natural, describing the predicament of modern existence and the natural environment, and exploring the visual interpretation of the resulting paradoxes of existence and culture. In addition to installations, installation sculptures, and paintings, the incorporation of performance gradually became an integral part of the works in this phase; the second phase will showcase the artist’s re-experience of the complex and diverse social images upon returning to China, with their works evolving to explore the individual’s struggles within societal survival forms and spiritual ruins. The works attempt to present a language composition akin to the absurd in terms of subject matter, materials, and form, creating visual and psychological conflicts and multi-layered interpretations, striving to convey the futility and absurdity of the struggle to escape the materiality of life. Through the resistance of the body’s presence in the environment, and by utilizing the “dramatic” juxtaposition and combination of the body and space, an intertwined, chaotic, and inexplicable antagonistic relationship is formed. This may reflect the artist’s current, indescribable spiritual and perceptual state of mind.

“NIGHT SCHOOL NY INSIGHT” Vol. 59

Body As My Dicourse Of Resistanse

Lecture: Haili Sun

Host：Jody Huang

Aug 21th, 2025 (Thu)

Sponsor: UP-ON Performance Art Archive

Sponsor: Nongyuan International Art Village

Haili Sun

Born in Sichuan in November 1960. In 1984, he enrolled in the Department of Fine Arts at Southwest Normal University, where he remained as a faculty member after graduation. In 1992, he settled in the UK, studying at Wimbledon College of Art, University of the Arts London, and earning a master’s degree. From 2017 to 2024, he returned to China to teach contemporary art at the Chengdu Academy of Fine Arts, Sichuan Conservatory of Music, while also establishing an “International Expert Studio” at Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts to conduct experimental teaching projects, where he was appointed as a foreign professor. His primary artistic forms include installations, performance art, and painting. He currently resides and works in Chengdu.

Works