06.06 |Good Country Good People Seminar
From “I” to “My Land”: Human Rights Advocates for Art
Event registration is free!! ️
This lecture invites Loretta Lau, founder of the human rights art organization in The Hague, Netherlands, 我地 NGO DEI , to share his personal life experiences, discrete experiences, and how to engage with art in society and continue to speak out for human rights.
Loretta is a performance artist herself, former art teacher at secondary schools in Hong Kong. After experiencing the anti-sending movement in 2019, witnessing people’s struggle for freedom and justice, she turned to “your own flesh” as a medium for social resistance through performance art. In 2019, she shaved her long hair at the Center for Contemporary Art in Prague, Czech Republic, to pay tribute to Liu Xiaobo and the students who died in the June 4th incident; since then she also organized the exhibition “As Far, as Exile” with Czech and Hungarian artists, bringing social protests in Hong Kong and the democratic process in Eastern Europe into an intertextual dialogue across time and space.
In 2021, the NGO DEI was officially founded in The Hague, Netherlands. “Our land” literally means “our land” and is also “we” in the slang language, and the organization aims to “where Hong Kong people are, Hong Kong is.” (Where Hongkongers are, there is Hong Kong.) the BIG )
From the original cultural settlement of Hong Kong people overseas, “Our Land” has grown into a multinational institution supported by Dutch official and international humanitarian platforms. The organization not only has a permanent human rights gallery in The Hague, seconded cultural relics from the Dutch National Institute for the historical exhibition of “Picking Up the Dead” but also hosted a large-scale international exhibition of “The World of Disorder” involving artists in exile from around the world during the NATO summit, and received the personal support of the Mayor of The Hague. From personal physical resistance to building up a transnational advocacy platform, Loretta will take us to see how overseas Hong Kongers can use international cultural resources flexibly, so that contemporary art is no longer just a mere bystander of reality, but a powerful weapon to engage in international politics, protect memory and practice universal human rights.
Speaker: Loretta Lau | Performance artist, NGO DEI head
Host: Lin Fangru | Director of Good People Cultural Action Association
Time: 06.06 (Sat) 19:00-21:00
Venue: 默契咖啡 (No. 902, Sec. 2, Taiwan Avenue, He Anli, Xitun District, Taichung City)
Organizer: 好民文化行動 , 華人民主書院協會