June 14th 8PM—3:30AM
Tickets: $10
About the Event:
HEART highlights humanity's deepest physical and emotional reserves to explore life from a theatrical perspective, a series of video art structured loosely on my internal raw energy cultivated by dance. The dancers are portrayed as monumental statues exuding strength and femininity, advancing video medium to a theatrical and immersive format. In the process of filming, we improvised to explore visceral emotions of love, strength and struggle with their personal stories, creating emotionally driven images inspired by Pina Bausch’s dance theater. Influenced by Tibetan Murals, or 'talking walls', I use contemporary technology to activate ancient Buddhist spiritual teachings, including images of nature, humans, goddesses and symbolic portals for higher energetic vibration.
About Sonia:
Sonia Li produces works that tap into her deepest emotional and spiritual reserve in what have been called transfiguring experiences. Her rich vocabulary of visual and sensory experience contrasts the familiar with the strange, stirring the deep subconscious. Li promotes spiritual awakening through nature themes, creating visceral experiences that include video, spatialized sound, bodily vibration, voice interaction and movement. "The idea," she explains, "is to provide an unique experience for self reflection and inject positivity into each visitor, to raise the energetic vibrations of the collective consciousness." Her penchant for artistic expression stem from her days at SUNY Purchase, where she made colorful mixed media installations. Her internal dialogues came alive through interactive technology at ITP/NYU. In 2014, she created Whale, an interactive multi-speaker sound installation at La Sala Performance, an expression of her internal world. Immersed in total darkness, visitors laid on the vibrating bed to speak into the microphone, as their voice come back in whale sounds that swim around them and vibrate through their bodies. Following Whale and her positive work in psychotherapy, she found dance, sending her on the spiritual path of living her true self. In 2019, HEART showed at CADAF in NYC. In 2018, Sonia was awarded a grant from the Taiwan Ministry of Culture to produce HEART’s video contents. HEART won the AFIAS Moving Image Award in Madrid, Spain, finalist in the ICIA International New Media Competition in Krakow, Poland, and exhibited in festivals such as FILE Electronic Language in Sao Paolo, Brazil.
Find out more at www.sonialidesigns.com / https://opensea.io/assets/cadaf2019