Hong Hong: The Past Does Not Need You, But It Borrows Your Mouth
DiverseWorks presents The Past Does Not Need You, But It Borrows Your Mouth, an exhibition of newly commissioned works by Hong Hong. This multidisciplinary presentation weaves together a four-channel video installation, sculpture, and live performance. Together, these works consider geography as a poetic structure, time as acquisition, history as erosion, and language as something transmitted through nonlinear experience.
The exhibition unfolds as two coexisting experiences. On March 17 and 18, the gallery will be open from 12–5 PM for visitors to experience the video installation and sculpture. Evening live performances at 7:30 PM (doors open at 6:30 PM) will activate the space, bringing all components of the work together in a unified, time-based presentation.
The presented works extend from a series of durational performances on Angel Island and the Marin Headlands between 2025 and 2026. In each performance, Hong Hong continuously walked the island’s perimeter and along the California coast. This repetitive circumambulation marked the island and shoreline’s spiritual resonance, notating them as sites where miracles occurred.
The Past Does Not Need You, But It Borrows Your Mouth continues ongoing research from Hong Hong’s residency with DiverseWorks in Fall 2025.
DATES & TIMES:
OPEN INSTALLATION
Four-channel video installation and sculpture
Tuesday, March 17 & Wednesday, March 18, 12 PM – 5 PM
Free admission. No tickets required.
LIVE PERFORMANCES*
Tuesday, March 17, 7:30 PM, doors open 6:30 PM
RESERVE TICKETS HERE
Wednesday, March 18, 7:30 PM, doors open 6:30 PM
RESERVE TICKETS HERE
Pay-what-you-wish, $25 suggested. All are welcome. Tickets required.
*Ticket holders are encouraged to arrive at 6:30 PM to experience the video installation before the start of the performance.
ARTIST BIO:
Born in Hefei, Anhui, China, Hong Hong works with image-making and language through repetition, disruption, movement, accumulation, limitation, translation, evaporation, and dispersion. She considers the materiality of the body, the histories of craft, the semiotics of poetry as well as the field of painting in relation to identity, memory, nations, and land. Hong’s practice centers the creation and preservation of a Chinese-American subjectivity rooted in largeness, multiplicity, opacity, self-definition, and self-determination.
Hong Hong is the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts (2025), Chiaro Award in Painting at Headlands Center for the Arts (2025), Tulsa Artist Fellowship (2024 – 2026), United States Artists Fellowship in Craft (2023), Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in Painting (2023), Carnegie Foundation Fellowship at MacDowell (2020), Helen Frankenthaler Foundation Fellowship at Vermont Studio Center (2019), and Artistic Excellence Fellowship from the Connecticut Office of Arts (2019). She has participated in residencies at McColl Center for Art + Innovation (2022), Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (2020 – 2021), Yaddo (2019), and I-Park (2018).
Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions at Real Art Ways (Hartford, CT), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, AR), Oklahoma Contemporary (Oklahoma City, OK), Georgia Museum of Art (Athens, GA), Ortega Y Gasset Projects (New York, NY), Center for Maine Contemporary Art (Rockland, ME), NXTHVN (New Haven, CT), Fitchburg Art Museum (Fitchburg, MA), Tephra Institute for Contemporary Art (Reston, VA), San Francisco Center for Book Arts (San Francisco, CA), Tiger Strikes Asteroid (Los Angeles, CA), Akron Art Museum (Akron, OH), Asia Society Texas Center (Houston, TX), and University of Texas at Dallas (Dallas, TX), among others.