Performance: And so we dreamt of flight

As a part of the opening celebration the exhibition we need to talk, performers Natalie Brewster Nguyen, Serena Tang, and Denise Uyehara will perform in the installation with balloons as their partners, drawing on their collective experience with acrobatics, butoh, modern dance, circus, improvisation, and performance art.

About the exhibition

we need to talk is a large-scale installation by artist Natalie Brewster Nguyen that combines weather balloons, text, and audio to explore division and repair; celebration and excess; and the emotional and ecological impacts of human behavior. Balloons are symbols of whimsy used as decoration in children’s birthday parties and celebrations, and simultaneously hold heavier histories as tools in wartime communication, early flight, and as ceremonial objects. Situated in MOCA Tucson’s Great Hall and rooftop, the artist creates a field of weather balloons of various sizes printed with fragments of text that drift through space, shifting in meaning with each interaction and over time, accompanied by layered audio composition.