An Uneasy Piece with Eggs Chengdu 2024

24 Oct 2024 : A4 Art Museum, outdoor site, Chengdu, Sichuan, China

First performed in Sydney, Australia in 2017, this was only the second time I’ve performed this work. In 2017 I was 64 years old and now I’m turning 72. I have made a few different works involving eggs, which for me are ‘quirky’ objects, and traditionally are a symbol of life. In this performance I consider my relationship with age, life and culture. Wearing a business suit I break 72 eggs one by one onto the top of my head. The title firstly plays on the words ‘piece’ and ‘peace’, which sound the same. A piece being a performance work, and ‘making peace’ with oneself. Also I refer to sometimes feeling that I fit in ‘Asian’ culture and to the resulting cultural adaptations one makes. An egg is white on the outside and yellow on the inside. In this way it is also a reference to Singaporean performance artist Lee Wen’s “Journey of a Yellow Man” series, in which he painted himself yellow (already being a ‘yellow’ man). The number of eggs used is equivalent in number to my age in years: 72. In British measurement 72 eggs is 6 dozen, a dozen is 12. Interestingly I’ve come around to my sixth return of the Year of the Dragon in which I was born, occurring every 12 years. Counting eggs, counting years, observing declining virility and fertility. The egg is a symbol of life and ceremony in many traditions including in my own Jewish culture. I acknowledge that in this performance I waste food but here I am not working from the concept of food and nourishment, but with the egg as a symbol. Standing in a circular tray which collects the broken shells and egg matter, I attempt to briefly recall significant moments of each passing year I’ve lived. At the end of the performance I remove my suit, shirt and shoes. Standing only in my underpants I lower a line attached to clothes hangers and then raise up the clothing as the empty shell of my existence, with the shoes replaced onto the tray. This final installation and my absence from it represent the fragility of human existence and our uncertainty as to how many years we are allocated.

For me quite unexpectedly, several of the audience interfered and interacted by stealing eggs, not knowing their meaning in advance. I actually submitted the text about the performance before the festival so I expected people would be informed. I didn’t expect audience to cross the ‘threshold’ of the circular tray in which I stood and the step of the base of the tower. Many people asked how I felt after these intrusions. Actually I was a bit angry because they were stealing years from me! Also I was concentrating hard to recall each year and that flow was disturbed. In the end most eggs were returned to me, but had they not been returned I think I would have stood silently to see what would happen.