Performance

Sowing Rice

Year: 2014
Medium: Participatory performance; milled rice and a glass container
Location: Contemporary MOMA, Beijing
Video recording: Zu Yi

Performance recording · 03:28

Sowing Rice: document 02 — The artist distributing rice to visitors during Sowing Rice.

Sowing Rice: document 03 — A visitor receiving rice from the artist.

Sowing Rice: document 04 — Another interaction involving the distribution of rice.

Sowing Rice: document 05 — The artist holding the container of rice among visitors.

Artist’s statement

Sowing Rice is a performance in which visitors can take part. Participants plant the rice they receive wherever they wish, or within the grounds where the performance takes place. Food is the basis of human survival. As a staple food in China, a country with one sixth of the world’s population, rice has a particular significance there. At a time when genetic modification is widely used, food safety has naturally become one of the issues of greatest concern worldwide. Milled rice is different from unhusked rice: the latter can serve as seed, whereas rice that has been processed and had its husk removed no longer has the conditions required to grow. What, then, can be harvested by sowing rice in this performance?