I Have Been There – Riyadh, Dammam

I Have Been There – Riyadh + Dammam

Performance Photograph, 2022

Chun Hua Catherine Dong’s body is covered by a Chinese red blanket, Dong lies in front of two sand bike on Red Sand Dunes in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Chun Hua Catherine Dong’s body is covered by a Chinese red blanket, Dong lies on top of red sand on Red Sand Dunes in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Chun Hua Catherine Dong sleeps at edge of the world, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, her body is covered with a Chinese red blanket, four Saudi men sit behind her.

Chun Hua Catherine Dong sleeps at edge of the world, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, her body is covered with a Chinese red blanket, four young Saudi men look at her.

Chun Hua Catherine Dong sleeps at edge of the world, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, her body is covered with a Chinese red blanket.

Chun Hua Catherine Dong sleeps in front of a big book called land of civilizations, Al-Qara Hill , Saudi Arabia, her body is covered with a Chinese red blanket.

Chun Hua Catherine Dong sleeps in front of group strange rocks, Al-Qara Hill , Saudi Arabia, her body is covered with a Chinese red blanket

Chun Hua Catherine Dong sleeps in front of strange architecture, King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture – Ithra, Damman, Saudi Arabia, her body is covered with a Chinese red blanket

Chun Hua Catherine Dong sleeps in front of Imam turki bin aboullah grand mosque, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, her body is covered with a Chinese red blanket.

Chun Hua Catherine Dong sleeps in front of Masmak foutress, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, her body is covered with a Chinese red blanket.

Chun Hua Catherine Dong sleeps in front of Imam turki bin aboullah grand mosque, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, her body is covered with a Chinese red blanket. Lots of birds fly up behind her

Chun Hua Catherine Dong sleeps in front of a strange architecture, Damman, Saudi Arabia, her body is covered with a Chinese red blanket

Chun Hua Catherine Dong sleeps in front of the famous kingdom town in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, her body is covered with a Chinese red blanket.

Chun Hua Catherine Dong sleeps in front of the famous architecture in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, her body is covered with a Chinese red blanket.

I Have Been There is an on-going public intervention performance that explores belonging, diaspora, and embodied existence in public spaces. Each time I travel to a new place, I make a new duvet with Chinese traditional embroidered silk fabric. Covered by the duvet, I lie on ground of historical sites, landmarks, tourist attractions, and other significant places or events as a sign of negotiating and/or engaging with cultures and spaces.

This project is inspired by a funeral tradition in my hometown in China. When an elder person passes away, the daughters of this elder make shrouds with silk fabrics to cover their deceased parent’s body. If this elder has six daughters, this elder’s body will be covered by six different shrouds, layer by layer. As someone living abroad alone, without children or immediate family, the question of who will bury me after I die sometimes bothers me. Therefore, I make my own shrouds and bury myself publicly and repeatedly wherever I travel. This performance is a conscious act of agency, a celebration of existence, resilience, and continual rebirth. To lie down beneath these silken layers is to mark the beauty of being alive, to honor the body as both vulnerable and powerful, ephemeral and enduringg, transforming a ritual of farewell into one of affirmation and presence, a performance of becoming, in a world that so often seeks to erase.

This project often brings me into a liminal space. A space where I am not necessarily formally excluded, but not welcome neither. Especially when I am in a place highly controlled or politicalized, my intervention becomes risky. I have been arrested, forced to delete my photo documentations, stopped and questioned by police and security guards many times. And thus, this performance becomes a tool of testing out freedom and democracy of spaces. I Have Been There reimagines the public space as a stage, a playground, a site for unsanctioned art and subtle resistance. It opens a space for reflection on how bodies can intervene in systems of power through acts of stillness and presence. It offers an alternative framework for performative intervention, contributing to conversations in creative cultural activism and social change.

I began this performance in 2015 and have since performed in over 45 cities and more than 460 sites worldwide.

photo credit: Muhammed Sanash