Playing the Mountain

Serena Lee

Exposition

Playing the Mountain (2025)

Serena Lee

open exposition

About this exposition

Playing the Mountain is an artistic research project investigating balance as the dynamic interplay of yinyang, through the practice of taijiquan (a Chinese internal martial art). Based on this embodied practice, I explore balance not as a state but as movement, by transposing this dynamic of opposing forces into a constellation of participatory, sculptural and expanded cinema forms. Drawing on principles of Chinese aesthetics from a diasporic perspective, Playing the Mountain deploys artistic strategies to consider agency, (non-)presence, tension, and resistance. This constellation traces unseen forces through kites, music, geological processes and Chinese calligraphy, gathering different ways to ask: what are the implications of understanding balance, not as a state, but as a process? This research project manifests through material investigations, martial arts practice, participatory exchanges and collaboration, as part of my broader PhD-in-Practice research project, undertaken at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. The exhibition and writing workshop were presented in Summer - Autumn 2022 at Centre[3] for Artistic + Social Practice, in Hamilton, Canada, curated by Lesley Loksi Chan; the kite-making workshop was conducted in Summer 2024 at Decentric Circles Assembly in Warsaw, Poland (various sites), curated by the Work Hard! Play Hard! working group. Download Accessible PDF

type	research exposition
keywords	artistic research, embodied knowledge, martial arts, yinyang, cosmology, participation
date	29/12/2025
published	29/12/2025
last modified	29/12/2025
status	published
affiliation	Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien
copyright	Serena Lee
license	CC BY-NC-ND
language	Canadian English
url	https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2794897/2794898
doi	https://doi.org/10.22501/jar.2794897
published in	Journal for Artistic Research
portal issue	37. 37

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comments: 1 (last entry by Serena Lee - 28/05/2024 at 15:43)

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Playing the Mountain (2025)

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