9 Stories / 9 Histoires / 九則故事

This trilingual catalogue documents nine essential works from the Taiwanese artist through nine interviews with curators and institution officials, illustrated with archives and exhibition views.

This catalogue results from nine conversations between Lee Mingwei and nine curators or institutional directors—Adeline Lépine, Christine Macel, Limor Tomer, Suhanya Raffel, Kathryn Weir, Eugenie Tsai, Stephanie Rosenthal, Mami Kataoka and Simon Maidment—together with one of Mingwei's performers, Jean-Gabriel Manolis. These conversations tell stories of encounters and awkwardnesses, of moments of delights and grief, of joy and violence. The Moving Garden, Bedtime Stories, When Beauty Visits and Sonic Blossom deal with the notion of giftgiving; Bodhi Tree Project and Our Labyrinth with the world and oneself; The Letter Writing Project, Guernica in Sand and The Mending Project with the ideas of forgiveness, inclusion and repair. Each project is to be taken as an invitation to an inner and sensitive journey.

Nine conversations, thousands of experiences, encounters and circumstances: these are stories of the world as it goes by, made by and for the people, to be shared, told, and lived. Or, as John Cage once said, “The emotions—love, mirth, the heroic, wonder, tranquility, fear, anger, sorrow, disgust—are in the audience.” (Silence: Lectures and Writings, 1961)
Nicolas Garait

Lee Mingwei (born 1964 in Taiwan, lives and works in New York City and Paris) creates participatory installations, where strangers can explore issues of trust, intimacy, and self-awareness, and one-on-one events, where visitors contemplate these issues with the artist through eating, sleeping, walking and conversation. Lee's projects are often open-ended scenarios for everyday interaction, and take on different forms with the involvement of participants and change during the course of an exhibition.