I am
2019
Video installation
Screen, HD video, PVC adhesive on polystyrene
3’57’’
In this video I conveyed different identities to the audience by imitating the different languages of the world (the fixed image of myself and the changing of the language).
“When observed from a distance, the route of Peng seems to trace a trajectory of increasing awareness in which his body, a simulacrum of his person, modulates his voice from whispering to deflagration, up to a convinced assertion.
The work I Am (2019) is to be found in an initial whispering of the body, which inevitably poses a question linked to its video nature: are we dealing with a body? Is a body as reproduction, a meta-body, or a virtual body, detached from the spatio-temporal presence of the performative instant, capable of maintaining its own value and strength? Without wishing to lead further into this question, I believe it is more effective to refer to the broader concept of presence. In I Am Peng reproduces his own presence through a body that is still germinally aware: the video shows the artist, shot from the waist up, while repeating the formular expression that gives the installation its title in various languages, in a process that is simultaneously mantra, dialogue, transmission and declaration.”
(Giacomo Caccaguerra, 2024)