Ender Gallery: Closing the Open Studio: a Minecraft performance by Huidi Xiang
Image Description: Screenshot captured inside the Ender Gallery Minecraft server of artist in residence, Huidi Xiang's avatar. The image is captured from above the avatar using a bird's eye view, with Huidi's avatar looking up into the camera.
About
In “How to Be an Artist in Minecraft,” Ender Gallery artist-in-residence Huidi Xiang considered what it means to be a working artist within a game designed for play. Examining the affordances, limitations and expectations of creative work on the Minecraft platform, Xiang has developed the persona of the “artist villager.” Inside the exhibition on 16 October, from 12 – 1 PM CST, Xiang will interact with audience members as the artist villager persona, proposing a model for a non-player character that challenges the creative supremacy of the player.
The gallery invites you to experience the performance first-hand on the Minecraft platform. To participate in Minecraft, you will require a licensed copy of the Java edition of the game and a corresponding Minecraft account to join the server. Please contact cbluemke@mackenzie.art if you would like to join in-server but do not have an account. Instruction on how to join are available at: www.ender.gallery/howtojoin
The performance will also be livestreamed to the MacKenzie Art Gallery’s social media, including its Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch accounts, which are viewable without a Minecraft account.
About the artist:
Huidi Xiang is an artist and researcher currently based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. In her practice, Huidi makes sculptural objects, installations, and systems to explore the spatial and temporal effects of inhabiting both physical and virtual worlds in our contemporary life. With a playful yet forensic artistic language, her work articulates the emerging politics associated with the ever-expansive merging between the real and the simulated.
Huidi’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including Miller ICA in Pittsburgh, PA, USA, Center for Architecture and Design in New Orleans, LA, USA, South London Gallery in London, UK, and Yiiie Gallery in Chengdu, China.