Apply to Hug a Stranger for 20 Minutes in the Name of Art It is what it says it is. By Rachel Sugar Beijing-based art duo The Gao Brothers are recruiting volunteers to participate in their latest site-specific interactive performance. The piece, entitled “Embrace: The Utopia of Hugging for 20 Minutes,” will feature 60 strangers hugging. For 20 minutes. It is what it says it is. The brothers, Gao Qiang and Gao Zhen, have actually been doing hug-based performances around the world since 2000: across China and Hong Kong, but also in London, Nottingham, Marseilles, Arles, Berlin, and Tokyo, among others. According to the curators at New York’s Rh Gallery, where the brothers are currently showing, the pieces — taken together, they make up “The Hugging Project” — are about challenging “taboos of public interaction, gender roles, and sexuality.” It’s cuddly, yes, but it’s also political. These are, after all, the same artists...
- 3/7/2014
- by Rachel Sugar
- Nerve
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