2053: A Living Museum (2016)

Tate Liverpool

Re-enactment of On Kawara, Past, Present, Future

Within 2053: A Living Museum at Tate Liverpool, the artist re-enacted On Kawara’s Past, Present, Future as a durational performance exploring how artworks can persist through embodied gesture and temporal repetition. Seated on the gallery floor, the artist inscribed each passing minute by hand, transforming the act of marking time into a material trace of presence.

By extending Kawara’s meditation on time, existence, and the continuity of the everyday, the performance reimagined the museum as a living archive—one sustained through human engagement rather than static preservation. Through this re-enactment, the artist examined how the ephemeral might be prolonged, and how the passing moment can become both documentation and renewal.