iMIT List Visual Arts CenterKendall Square, Cambridge
Hao Jingban: I Witness
Blending documentary sensibility with poetic construction, Hao Jingban makes moving-image installations that are emotionally precise, historically incisive, and formally experimental.
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Preview: written before the show opened
On the centre screen, people move with their eyes closed while others watch. It's an authentic movement workshop: the "movers" follow their own impulses, and the "witnesses" take in the feeling behind each gesture. Elsewhere, an older woman who sleeps alone gets up to clean her refrigerator, and a group of young people pace an open field.
I Witness (2025) is a three-channel video about grief after the COVID-19 pandemic, following four people living with different losses. Hao works slowly and off-camera, building trust with her subjects over months or years. The soundtrack is a hum of heavy breathing and fridge-like drones. This is her first major solo show at a US museum, with other recent work grouped around it.
You stand in as one of the witnesses, which is how co-commissioner Singapore Art Museum frames the piece. The film runs 54 minutes 41 seconds, so plan for that rather than a quick pass. Entry is free, and the List is open until 7pm on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
Editor's pick
Moving-image installations that work documentary footage into something closer to poetry, shown free alongside Uri Aran. Five minutes from the Kendall Red Line stop, so it fits inside a biotech lunch break.
Look for
The authentic movement workshop
Look for the centre screen, where movers follow their impulses with eyes closed while witnesses sit watching and reading the emotion in each movement.
The woman and the refrigerator
An older woman who sleeps alone rises to clean her refrigerator, one of the stories of loss threaded through the film.
The young people in the field
A group of young people pace slowly across an open field, set against the installation's hum of breathing and fridge-like drones.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Evening Visits
- Going Solo
Also at MIT List Visual Arts Center
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Image credits
7
- Hao Jingban: I WitnessCourtesy the artist / MIT List Visual Arts Center
- Freezing Time: Edgerton and the Beauty of the Machine AgeCourtesy of MIT Museum
- MIT List Visual Arts Centerajay_suresh / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
- MIT MuseumS5A-0043 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
- Gibson House MuseumDaderot / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
- Museum of Science, BostonDaderot, via Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
- Massachusetts Historical Societyajay_suresh, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0