Please join us for City of Squatters, a lecture-performance by artist Simon Leung which meditates on two parallel bodies of work that Leung began in the early 1990s. The first, a series of “squatting projects” made in Europe, North America, and Asia, uses the squatting body, often in homology with squatting’s meaning in real estate, to picture subjection and power. The second, Leung’s twenty-seven-year collaboration with the late Warren Niesłuchowski, was, for him, an ethical education that continues even after, or perhaps especially because of, the death of the other.

This performative new work, which is also a response to the Jack Smith-inspired title of the Queens Museum exhibition— After the Plaster Foundation, or, “Where can we live?” —is a guide through which Leung looks anew at three decades of work against the backdrop of 2020. The backdrop which, he proposes, is dreaming its characters, its people.

Presented in conjunction with “AND WARREN NIESŁUCHOWSKI WAS THERE: GUEST, HOST, GHOST,” a tribute in the form of an exhibition and a book. Organized and edited by Joanna Warsza and Sina Najafi. (Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw  –  4 December 2020 – 12 January 2021 and Cabinet, New York  –  Spring 2021)

Attendees can also tune in via Youtube livestream.

Simon Leung (b. 1964, Hong Kong) is an artist based in New York and California. Leung has participated in numerous exhibitions including the 2003 Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy; the 1993 Whitney Biennial, New York, USA; the 2005 Luleå Summer Biennial, Norrbotten, Sweden; and the 2008 Guangzhou Triennial, Guangzhou, China.  Solo presentations/exhibitions include Pat Hearn Gallery, New York, USA; Anthology Film Archives, New York, USA; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles, USA; Drawing Center, New York, USA; Huntington Beach Art Center, Huntington Beach, USA; Las Cienegas Projects, Los Angeles, USA; CUE Art Foundation, New York, USA; the Kitchen, New York, USA; and the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Los Angeles, USA.