Dominique Fung Serves Tea and Culture on the High Line September 4-6

Dominique Fung on the the Diller – von Furstenberg Sundeck. Photo by Rowa Lee.

Fung Breaks into New Ground on the High Line with Her First Live Performance Commission

The High Line announced that artist Dominique Fung will present A Leaf’s Pilgrimage, her first live performance commission, on September 4, 5, and 6, 2025. Widely recognized for her evocative paintings and sculptures that explore the entangled histories of desire, cultural inheritance, and representation, Fung extends her practice into performance as both playwright and director. Set against the backdrop of the High Line, A Leaf’s Pilgrimage is a poetic meditation on the life of tea—its transformations, its labor, and its symbolism across time. The script weaves together centuries of global trade, technological change, and shifting gender roles to reveal the quiet endurance of ritual and meaning. Each evening, at 6pm and 7pm, two performances of A Leaf’s Pilgrimage will take place on the Diller – von Furstenberg Sundeck on the High Line near 14th Street.

“As someone who thinks deeply about objects, memory, and migration, it is incredibly meaningful to present this work on the High Line,” said artist Dominique Fung. “The space holds its own history of transformation, and in many ways, this performance is a conversation between those layers and the quiet rituals we carry with us.”

“Through her paintings and sculptures, Dominique Fung seizes and recontextualizes familiar motifs so often associated with exoticized Orientalist tropes,” said Taylor Zakarin, associate curator of High Line Art. “We are honored to support the expansion of her practice into performance art, and look forward to immersing the High Line’s audiences in Fung’s spectral universe.”

A Leaf’s Pilgrimage is a moving tableau—a poetic and, at times, absurdist journey through the life of a tea leaf. Guided by two characters, the solemn and surreal Guide and their deadpan foil, the Guide’s Assistant, the audience is led across the Diller – von Furstenberg Sundeck. Along the way, the audience is a witness to the tea’s transformation: from tender growth and harvest, to withering, oxidizing, drying, preservation, and ultimately tasting. Throughout, the audience unwittingly partakes in a voyeuristic exchange similar to those portrayed, subverted, and reclaimed by Fung in her paintings and sculptures.

Throughout her artistic practice, Fung excavates our collective inheritance of tradition, memory, and legacy, unearthing and liberating overlooked figures, misunderstood artifacts, and forgotten stories. Her work considers Orientalist fantasies, particularly as they relate to the sexualization, fetishization, and objectification of Asian women. Fung plays with this conflation between woman and thing in her paintings and sculptures, imbuing inanimate objects—artifacts, teapots, fishing rods, and food—with agency and nuance. Her canvases are portals into spectral scenes that lean into the uncanny, reversing the power dynamic of the gaze and orchestrating a confrontation between object and viewer.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Dominique Fung (b. 1987, Ottawa, Canada) lives and works in New York, New York. She has held solo exhibitions at institutions including ICA SF, San Francisco, California (2026) (forthcoming); Rockefeller Center, New York, New York (2023); and Pond Society, Shanghai, China (2022). Her work has been featured in major international group exhibitions including Where the Real Lies, Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Ogunquit, Maine (2025); Spirit House, Cantor Arts Center, Stanford, California (2024); Day for Night: New American Realism, Galleria Nazionali di Arte Antica, Rome, Italy (2024); I’m Not Afraid of Ghosts, Palazzo Tiepolo Passi, Venice, Italy (2024); Full Disclosure: Selections from the Thomas-Suwall Collection, Plains Art Museum, Fargo, North Dakota (2024); Women of Now: Dialogues of Identity, Memory and Place, Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, Texas (2022); My Secret Garden, Asia Art Center, Taipei, Taiwan (2021); SITE: Michigan Central Station, Library Street Collective, Detroit, Michigan (2021); Friends and Friends of Friends: Artistic Communities in the Age of Social Media, Schloss museum, Linz, Austria (2020); Barmecide Feast, The 14th Factory, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC (2018); and among many others. Fung’s work is included in the collections of the M+, K11 Art Foundation, Pond Society, Yuz Foundation, Aïshti Foundation, Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, East West Bank Collection, Hammer Museum, High Museum of Art, ICA Miami, LACMA, MoCA Los Angeles, The Huntington Library, among others.

SUPPORT

Lead support for High Line Art comes from Amanda and Don Mullen. Major support is provided by Shelley Fox Aarons and Philip E. Aarons, The Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston, and Charina Endowment Fund.

High Line Art is supported, in part, with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council, under the leadership of Speaker Adrienne Adams.

ABOUT HIGH LINE ART

Founded in 2009, High Line Art commissions and produces a wide array of artworks on the High Line, including site-specific commissions, exhibitions, performances, video programs, and a series of billboard interventions. Led by Cecilia Alemani, the Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Director & Chief Curator of High Line Art, and presented by the High Line, the art program invites artists to think of creative ways to engage with the unique architecture, history, and design of the park, and to foster a productive dialogue with the surrounding neighborhood and urban landscape.

For more information on High Line Art, please visit thehighline.org/art.

ABOUT THE HIGH LINE

The High Line is a public park on the West Side of Manhattan operated, maintained, and funded by the nonprofit conservancy Friends of the High Line. Through our work with communities on and off the High Line, Friends of the High Line is devoted to reimagining public spaces to create connected, healthy neighborhoods and cities.

Built on a historic, elevated rail line, the High Line was always intended to be more than a park. You can walk through the gardens, view art, experience a performance, enjoy food or beverage, or connect with friends and neighbors—all while enjoying a unique perspective of New York City.

Nearly 100% of our annual budget comes through donations. The High Line is owned by the City of New York, and we operate the park under a license agreement with NYC Parks.

For more information, visit thehighline.org and follow us on Facebook, X, Instagram and TikTok.

@HighLineArtNYC @dominiquefung