Unbuilt Door

This is a collaborative sound installation created by Jiayu Zhang and Joana P. Cardozo during the emergency state of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spring 2020. Jiayu and Joana were studio neighbors at CalArts. They were going to tear down part of the wall that separates their studios to create a door connecting the two spaces and experiment working in that new reality. Due to the closedown of the Institute and the pandemic circumstances, participants are now guided by the artists’ voice narrating the process of breaking through a wall and entering the space beyond. Two recordings from two opposite perspectives, the wall-breaker and their next-door neighbor, require participants to imagine the work and deal with questions of transgression and acceptance. Jiayu is Chinese and Joana is Brazilian. Jiayu and Joana believe this piece is particularly relevant because dismantling a wall whether in the real world or people’s imagination is a way of sharing the same space, resisting and reinventing ways to connect, hug and feel each other in times of segregation.