China-born, UK-based performance artist Echo Morgan (Xie Rong) explores themes of personal trauma, gender expectations and cultural identity through deeply immersive and often interactive performances. In her piece Be the Inside of the Vase, Morgan confronts the conflicting messages she received as a young girl from her parents about femininity and self-worth, using it as a starting point to engage the double standards that a patriarchal society places on women.
“Don’t be a vase, pretty but empty inside, be the inside, be the quality!” said her mother. Meanwhile, her father would say, “Women should be like vases, smooth, decorative and empty inside!” Hence, the two-part performance piece uses symbolism, storytelling and audience participation to weigh in on how her mother’s and father’s contradicting advice has shaped Morgan’s experience as a modern Chinese woman. Be the Inside of the Vase is a work that tells the story of women everywhere who must attempt to dismantle both external and internalized patriarchal power dynamics. This is why the work is aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of Gender Equality and Reduced Inequalities.
To ponder on the two remarks from her mother and father, the performance is split into two parts, beginning with Million Dollar Baby, which reflects on her father’s perspective. In the performance, Morgan embodies the father’s wish that women should be like a vase and stand motionless with her whole body painted to resemble a porcelain Chinese vase. A recording of her voice echoes through the room, telling her father’s tumultuous and chaotic life story that led to her own rocky childhood, and ends with her father’s suicide. This performance feels almost like exposure therapy, where Morgan spends hours listening to her father’s stories and how they affected her own life, perpetually contemplating and releasing emotions attached to them until she detaches from them, emotionally healing herself.
The second part of the performance, Break the Vase, reflects on her mother’s perspective. Unlike her reflection of her father’s, which requires her silent obedience, this sees her interacting with her audiences. In the piece, Morgan has quite literally become the inside of a paper vase she constructed. In front of her are 150 colourful water balloons that she encourages passing audiences to throw at her, allowing her to react differently every time a new viewer throws a new balloon. Over time, the water balloons destroy the paper vase, leaving nothing but her nude body underneath. This piece contemplates not only her mother’s remarks, but also the roles that mothers, daughters and women have to play in a patriarchal society. Women are constantly being subjected to outside criticism, as reflected by the water balloons, which may just strip them bare of their defences and human qualities.
In Be the Inside of the Vase, Echo Morgan transforms her generational trauma into performance art, weaving fractured familial expectations into a universal narrative of reclamation and retribution for women, mothers and daughters across the world. Through the silent endurance of Million Dollar Baby and the vulnerable catharsis of Break the Vase, she ritualizes the struggles of countless women navigating patriarchal confines. Her work is a collective call to break open oppressive moulds, honour the complexities of womanhood and ultimately—like the shattered paper vase— and reveal the unadorned, powerful truth beneath.
Find out more about works by Echo Morgan and her other initiatives by checking her Instagram @_echomorgan_ or website www.echomorgan.com.