Eight years of performance art comes to Museum of Something
21 November – 5th December 2026 | Museum of Something, Hang Dong
What happens when art responds to the world around us? And what can the human body, movement and shared experience communicate that words sometimes cannot?
These are among the questions explored in Responding Performance Art Initiative, an exhibition coming to Museum of Something (MOS) in Hang Dong from 21st November to 5th December.
Curated by Japanese artist Daisuke Takeya and coordinated by Boat Sutasinee Kansomdee, the exhibition looks back at eight years of Respo, an international performance art initiative established in 2018. Bringing together artists from Japan and around the world, Respo explores social issues through research, physical expression, performance and collaboration.
The initiative began as a performance art festival called Responding Performance Art and Meeting, inspired by the late Lee Wen, one of Asia’s pioneering performance artists, who encouraged Takeya during his time in Singapore. Over the years, the project has evolved into a collective with a stronger emphasis on research, responding to specific places and engaging with the social realities of different communities.
Rather than simply presenting performances, Respo invites artists to investigate the issues surrounding them, develop work in response and share their perspectives with audiences. The idea is that performance art can create a common language, opening up conversations and connections between people who might otherwise experience the world very differently.
The Chiang Mai exhibition brings together fragments of this eight-year journey, presenting elements of the initiative’s past activities as individual artworks. It offers visitors an opportunity to explore the collective’s evolving practice, its international network and the many ways artists have interpreted and responded to social challenges.
Eight core members are represented: Daisuke Takeya, Yuzuru Maeda, Miri Hamada, Maron Shibukawa, TAKUMICHAN, Mineki Murata, Midori Miyamori and Yoshiya Makita. Their practices span sculpture, installation, improvisation, contemporary dance, theatre, criticism, historical research and performance art.
Among them, Mineki Murata explores drawing and performance as primitive physical acts, while Yuzuru Maeda works across music, video, installation and performance, using full-body suits to investigate identity, perception and collective presence. Miri Hamada draws on local histories, everyday objects and community participation, creating works in which personal experiences intersect with collective memory. Meanwhile, multidisciplinary artist Daisuke Takeya, who has exhibited internationally, continues to explore the relationship between nature and contemporary society.
The exhibition also acknowledges the many artists who have participated in Respo’s activities over the years, including performers and collectives from Japan, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Europe and North America. Among the featured past participants are John Court, Mideo M. Cruz, Racquel de Loyola, Ezzam Rahman, Urich Lau, Jennie Klein and the Toronto Performance Art Collective.
The opening reception on Saturday, 21st November, will be particularly lively, with solo performances by six of the collective’s members beginning at 6pm. Visitors will have the opportunity to experience the work not simply as something to observe, but as something unfolding in real time, in the shared space between artist and audience.
For those unfamiliar with performance art, this exhibition offers an interesting introduction to a practice that stretches beyond traditional ideas of painting and sculpture. Here, the body becomes a medium, movement becomes a language and the audience becomes part of the experience.
Exhibition details
Responding Performance Art Initiative レスポ
21st November – 5th December 2026
10am–5pm
Opening reception and performances: Saturday, 21st November, 5–8pm. Performances begin at 6pm.
Venue: Museum of Something (MOS)
198/3 Moo 11, Ban Phon Road, Nam Phrae, Hang Dong, Chiang Mai 50230
Curated by Daisuke Takeya
Coordinated by Boat Sutasinee Kansomdee
Instagram: @mos.museumofsomething
Facebook: Museum of Something
Website: responding.jp