PORTFOLIO

A Soundwalk in the forest through Externstein in Horn-Bad-Meinberg in Germany

The work explores themes of trauma, discipline, and transformation, drawing inspiration from Pina Bausch’s groundbreaking contributions to contemporary dance. Bausch was renowned for exposing fragility, anger, and raw emotion beneath the surface of human experience—an influence that is deeply embedded in Duoni’s installation.

At its center stands a shoe-testing machine that relentlessly hammers pointe shoes in sync with the rhythm of Le Sacre du Printemps. This mechanically precise, repetitive motion evokes the intense physical and emotional endurance demanded of ballet dancers, particularly those cast as the “Chosen Ones” in Duoni’s reinterpretation of the iconic performance.

Surrounding the machine, worn-out and discarded pointe shoes are scattered across the floor—an evocative testament to the sacrifice, pain, and ultimate exhaustion of body and mind in the relentless pursuit of perfection. By contrasting the merciless precision of the machine with the vulnerability embodied in the used shoes, Duoni critiques the inherent brutality and absurdity of traditional ballet practices.

At the same time, Spitzen Warentest can be read as a tribute to Bausch’s radical artistic vision, which broke away from classical ideals and redefined dance as a space for emotional honesty and human truth.

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Spitzen Warentest

Spitzen Warentest

The work explores themes of trauma, discipline, and transformation, drawing inspiration from Pina Bausch’s groundbreaking contributions to contemporary dance.

Sound installation with sculpture in Kunstmuseum Solingen, 2025

Un bel dì vedremo…..

The Egyptian pyramids, as symbols of a vast cultural and historical legacy, have often been appropriated in Western representations to evoke the ‘mystical’ and ‘timeless’ East. This Orientalism creates a contrast between the ‘civilized’ West and the ‘exotic’ East, based on the made up ‘otherness’ of Eastern civilizations. As monumental structures, pyramids encapsulate the tensions within cultural memory, frequently used in Western discourse to emphasize this ‘otherness’ while also serving as a backdrop for imperial narratives.

Duoni’s sound installation becomes a powerful medium for examining the relationship between Orientalism and Western opera, a lens through which Western perceptions of the East have long been filtered. Through her collage of famous Western opera masterpieces, set beneath this symbolic architecture in Monheim, she seeks to reveal the hidden traces of Orientalism embedded in the sacred realm of Western opera, raising awareness of the prejudice and consequently the sexism—that one experiences as an Asian woman living in the West.

Sound Installation
in Mack-Pyramide Monheim

VERHÖR

(Interrogation/Misheard) is a quadrophonic audio-visual work. It is a collage of composed dialogues between Amanda Knox, Steven Avery, Brendan Dassey with music excerpts. It deals with the conscious and unconscious manipulation of hearing. With this piece, Duoni wanted to contrast the mishearing (German: Verhören) as an acoustic phenomenon with the (police) interrogation (German: Verhör), i.e. the interrogation of a person and the associated potential misunderstandings and distortions of statements. It combined different elements: on the one hand, she arranged “dialogue” between Amanda Knox, Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey, as well as the police and journalists as a sound collage. On the other hand, she have put together excerpts from well-known pop music songs and other works that are famous for containing “misheard lyrics”. These excerpts are sometimes very short and sometimes only contain the text that is often misunderstood by the listener. This element shows the aspect of interrogation as a failure of human hearing or understanding. Also, the reason for the choice of the music samples containing misheard lyrics may not be obvious to all listeners, creating an additional layer of “manipulated” misunderstanding and/or mishearing.

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‘Oops!

I dropped my….’

Oops! I dropped my species

“Oops! I dropped my…” is a series of compositions by Duoni, through which she removes contemporary art from its usual conceptual framework and creates an interactive discourse between artist, audience, and city.

For this series, Duoni Liu (in collaboration with others) creates a graphic score. This score is based on the layout of a selected route that extends through alleys, squares, or streets of a city, or moves around a specific location or in and around a particular building. Whenever possible, this route is intended to include historically and socially significant as well as culturally interesting places.