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Brian Fuata
THIS IS

Brian Fuata – THIS IS

THIS IS (2023) is a new improvised performance by Sydney-based artist Brian Fuata based on Fuata’s recent performance, Easter (2023), which was aborted midway through the second act due to a technical malfunction. Announcing “I can’t do this anymore”, Fuata walked out without completing the three-act sequence. 

Easter (2023) is the “coming out story” drawing from three of the 14 Stations of the Cross – this 14-step Catholic devotion commemorates Jesus Christ’s final day on Earth and is commonly found in churches as iconography or imagery. THIS IS emerges from the psychic remnants of the failed performance beginning where Fuata left off. Incorporating spoken word, improvisation and performance art, Fuata will respond to the physical spaces and sonic resonance of PICA’s architecture.

Timings

Performance Start: 4:45pm
Duration: approximately 30 minutes

Presented by sweet pea and PICA

Brian Fuata is a Samoan artist born in Aotearoa / New Zealand and based in Sydney, Australia. In addition to a live art practice of structured improvisation, Fuata has developed a unique method of remote performance through email correspondence and text message exchanges. Alongside his solo practice, he is part of the duo Wrong Solo with Agatha Gothe-Snape. In April 2022, Fuata and artist Latai Taumoepeau curated MONUMENTAL (working title), a weekend of multidisciplinary performance for the Art Gallery of New South Wales’s 150-year anniversary celebrations which was recently remounted as part of the Sydney Festival in January 2023.

Fuata was the 2020 Winner of the ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art, Helsinki. Past works include: Untitled (Intermission), 2022 ANTI Festival Helsinki and Singapore Biennale (2022), Five Columns, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne (2020), Apparitional Charlatan ~ Minor Appearances, Biennale of Sydney (2020); Care disfigurements (flowers), 4A Gallery Sydney for Hong Kong Art Fair, Hong Kong (2019); Broadloom, Murray Art Museum Albury (2019); IWMLDFS (or MINIBAR), Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (2019); The Guest House, Gwangju Biennial, South Korea (2018); All Nothing, Poetry Project, New York (2015); All titles, PERFORMA, New York (2015); Untitled (a refit of the sheet), Chisenhale Gallery, London (2015); Points of Departure 1–3, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2014).

Supporters

Image: Louis Lim

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