SCAA x mep: Exhibition Visit, Performance & Conversation with artist Ni Daodao

Join SCAA and MEP to explore Tending with Ni Daodao through exhibition viewing, a live participatory performance and open conversation.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

How can painting grow out of the everyday labour of gardening?

In Tending, Ni Daodao translates the experience of tending soil, gathering fallen leaves, observing moisture and waiting for change into a way of making urushi paintings on paper. The labour of the garden enters the painting process: providing conditions for a material, attending to its responses, and making ongoing adjustments.

Urushi, a natural tree-sap lacquer, requires suitable humidity and temperature to cure. Daodao places lacquered paper among fallen leaves, using the moisture held within them to support this process. The leaves used in everyday soil care thus also participate in the making of paintings. Gardening and painting share an environment, a duration and the artist’s daily labour.

Cultivation becomes a concrete method of painting. The work…