For the last ten years, internationally renowned Korean-born, Germany-based artist Haegue Yang has been re-staging a work by the French, by way of Vietnam, poststructuralist icon Marguerite Duras, Malady of Death. The two artists, despite their unique experiences and expressions, cross paths with their acknowledgment of fragility and instability of self, a thematic juncture that has proved generative across many continents and languages. Always seeking a local performer to expand the work and root it in a regional context, Malady of Death in Haegue's staging is a monodrama about an hour in length with projections. To date, Malady of Death has been performed at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2010); Namsan Arts Center, Seoul (2010); and dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, (2013); and most recently at Mobile M+: Live Art, Hong Kong (2015). Join us for its Canadian premiere with Sook-Yin Lee.

Sook-Yin Lee is a Canadian filmmaker, musician, actor, visual artist, radio & TV broadcaster and all-around cultural icon. The former MuchMusic VJ hosted and co-produced the personal storytelling program DNTO on CBC Radio 1. She stared in the adventurous sex comedy Shortbus, directed by John Cameron Mitchell, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and whose performance earned her the 2007 Best Supporting Actress award from the International Cinephile Society. Year of the Carnivore is Sook-Yin Lee's feature movie debut as writer-director which she followed with 2016 release of Octavio is Dead starring amongst others Sarah Gadon and Rosanna Arquette. She co-created the Genie-nominated score and concept album, Original Music From and Inspired by the Movie Year of the Carnivore, with Buck 65 and Adam Litovitz with whom she also co-led the band Jooj. On stage, she debuted How Can I Forget? an experimental-narrative-theatre debut which she wrote, directed and performed at the 2013 Rhubarb Festival as well as unsafe at Canadian Stage that looked at questions of censorship and artistic freedom.

A leading artist of her generation, Haegue Yang (b. 1971 Seoul) is celebrated for her prolific and diverse work that evokes historical and contemporary narratives of migration, displacement and cross-cultural translation. For over two decades, Yang has been transforming how we experience everyday domestic materials, turning items such as venetian blinds, light bulbs, drying racks, knitting yarn and bells into meticulously constructed installations and sculptures. To unleash the historical and emotional resonances of these objects, Yang activates them with sounds, light, air, scents and movement.