Performance/Free College Sunday | Bingyi’s “Heaven and Earth: The Garden of Cosmos"

To celebrate the exhibition Sing a New Song: The Psalms in Medieval Art and Life, Beijing-based artist Bingyi brings her captivating performance piece, Heaven and Earth: The Garden of the Cosmos to the Morgan Garden. The performance is inspired by Psalm 104 and its reverence for creation, divine order, and cosmic harmony that transcend cultural boundaries. Clad in a flowing, ink-painted garment, Bingyi is joined in a processional performance by Aluo, a Yi minority singer whose voice resonates with the universal vibration of Om, and Tibetan ritual master Nanmei, whose sacred Mantra chants draw on Vajrayana Buddhism. Together, their harmonious chanting connects the performers and the audience to the Psalm 104’s eloquent exaltation of the divine order of creation.

This performance is presented in partnership with Foundation for Spirituality and the Arts, a non-profit 501(c)(3) dedicated to providing support for the creation and dissemination of spiritually informed art and its discourse.

Bingyi earned a Ph.D. in Art History and Archeology from Yale University in 2005 with a dissertation on the art of the Han Dynasty. In her large-scale ink paintings, Bingyi uses ink as “dark light”—carbon, an absolute absorber of light, in water, nature’s universal translucent solvent—to illuminate the usually invisible and transient physical processes that enable ordered patterns and forms to arise from chaos. Bingyi has exhibited internationally at LACMA (2024), Philadelphia Museum of Art (2022), the Brooklyn Museum (2019), the National Art Museum of

China (2017), Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art (2016), Istanbul Modern (2016), Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Alicante, Alicante, Spain (2014), St. Johannes-Evangelist-Kirche, Berlin, Germany (2012), Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, Chicago, USA (2010), Galerie Erna Hecey, Brussels, Belgium (2009), Contrasts Gallery, Shanghai, China (2009), and Max Protetch Gallery, New York, USA (2008), among others.

The exhibition Sing a New Song: The Psalms in Medieval Art and Life and Life will be open to attendees before and after the performances. Attendees will gather in the Morgan Garden. In the event of inclement weather, the performance will takes place in Gilder Lehrman Hall.