David Khang Phalogocentrix Soundtrack composition: Jason deCouto FADO Production, March 17, 2007, 8 pm Music Gallery/St George-the-Martyr Anglican Church (197 John St.) Toronto, Canada Co-sponsored by Vtape and the Images Festival. Toronto... On March 17, Fado is pleased to present Vancouver-based artist David Khang. Phalogocentrix is a performance about language and the way it forms and informs our culture. Vancouver-based artist David Khang interrogates constructions and performativity of language that is at once gendered (phallocentric) and culturally specific (logocentric). Part calligraphy, part yoga, and part breakdancing, this syncretic ritual explores African and Asian cultural connectivities, within the theological context of a church. By bringing together traditional and contemporary cultural references, as well as trans-diasporic identities, this work is an attempt to further critical understanding of the relationships between race, gender, and language. David Khang's work is informed by previous educational backgrounds in psychology, theology, and dentistry. In recent works, he uses 'things' foreign to the human body – live butterflies, extracted wisdom teeth, raw beef tongue – as prosthetics to "perform" language. Khang received his BFA from Emily Carr Institute (2000), and MFA with Emphasis in Critical Theory from the University of California, Irvine (2004). Khang currently lives and works in Vancouver, where he is a Sessional Faculty at the Emily Carr Institute. He is a 2006-07 recipient of the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art. <--back to Fado main page Photography by Abdi Osman Photography by Miklos Legrady <--back to Fado main page