My name is Theresa Wong,
and I'm a composer, a cellist and vocalist.
And my work often incorporates improvization
and multimedia performance.
I've been involved with
the Asian Art Museum to present three different performances over the summer,
which will be inspired by artworks in the collection.
I've been absorbing the collection
and just taking in all the information and researching.
Also speaking to curators and different museum staff
to learn about this vast collection,
and then taking that as inspiration to create three
different kind of soundings, or performances, at the museum.
One thing
that's really drawn me immediately, almost like a guiding spirit,
would be the figure of Guanyin, which is the statue you see behind me.
I had grown up knowing about this goddess deity in Chinese culture as a female.
A female goddess.
And so when I saw this representation as a prince, as a man, it surprised me.
And as I began to research all the different versions
of this bodhisattva, I realized that it
appears in many, many cultures of Asia,
and it changes genders.
And so I found that it's really interesting how that changed throughout history.
The other thing that I love about it is that the name Guanyin actually means
"the one who hears all the sounds of the world,"
which refers to the idea of hearing all the laments and the cries of the world.
But as a composer, that's also really got a beautiful ring
to it, as that is sort of what we do as well.
There's a particular work that struck me by Uragami Gyokudo, from about 1812.
And he painted a landscape
in the kind of traditional Chinese way of mountains and rocks.
But he was also a qin player, and the qin is a seven stringed
zither that is one of the oldest Chinese instruments.
And many scholars have actually likened his brushwork
to the musical components of qin playing.
That gesture has energy in it visually, just as sound
and a gesture
that you make on an instrument can carry and have a certain amount of energy,
whether it's plucking or playing glissandi or playing harmonics
or snap pizzicato or inventing certain techniques.
And I love making that connection, and I hope to explore that
more, too, in this piece.
I have been really inspired by the work of Carlos Vila,
whose work will be exhibited in the summer.
He embraced this poly-cultural aspect of himself
as an as a Filipino artist, and incorporating his heritage,
his own heritage into something very personal.
I think there's something so special about seeing an artwork in person
and to just sit with it, and you realize all the history
that has come before us and how it shapes us as well.
And so that is a very powerful thing that I hope more and more visitors can do.
And I hope that my work can also perhaps
open doors to other ways of seeing these pieces.