Artist Movana Chen brings her performance with interconnected wearable sculptures to London

The artist Movana Chen’s London performance brings her iconic paper-woven sculptures to life, reflecting on the vital need for human interconnectedness in a world increasingly divided by borders and climate threats.

Questioning the Line at the Coronet Theatre in Notting Hill (14-17 October) features seven of Chen’s interconnected wearable sculptures developed between 2005 and 2025. Coinciding with Frieze London, it is the largest iteration of this performance series to date.

Seven performers, including Chen herself, each wear one of these sculptures called Body Containers and knitted from shredded maps, collectively exploring human relationships by transforming still sculptures into living beings through coordinated movement.

“Paper comes from nature. It’s very fragile, but when you weave it together, it’s strong,” Chen says from her studio in Lisbon, her primary base since relocating from Hong Kong five years ago.

Weaving shreds of paper with knitting needles is technically complicated, but Chen has more than two decades of practice. Her work has been exhibited globally, including at the recently opened Contextile 2026 in Guimarães, Portugal, and is held in major public and private collections, including M+ in Hong Kong and the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane.

Chen views the process of weaving paper shreds as resembling the nature of human relationships. “When you knit paper shreds together, you have to do it in a soft, gentle motion, giving it space, just like relationships between humans,” she says. “This breathing space makes the bond strong.”

Questioning The Line first took shape in 2023 while Chen was reflecting on the surreal social distancing and travel lockdowns of the Covid-19 pandemic. For 21 days Chen travelled in a van across the natural landscapes of Europe alongside performer Francisco Borges and cinematographer Tyler Weinberger. During this journey, Chen reconstructed the experience of travelling without borders while reconnecting with nature, using her Body Containers sculptures as vessels for storytelling and communication.

“During the lockdown, humans were separated from each other, but nature was not,” she recalls. Performing against natural backdrops, from rocky mountains to rivers, caused some damage to the wearable sculptures, she notes. “But such imperfections are part of life. When a work is too perfect, it’s like a life without experience.”

The performance was featured in Art Basel Hong Kong 2025’s Encounters sector, presented by Flowers Gallery, where it caught the eye of Anda Winters, the chief executive of the Coronet Theatre. Chen visited the London venue that September and began discussing plans to stage the performance in the UK capital.

Chen says the performance in the theatre’s black box studio diverges significantly from previous iterations, creating a more intimate experience. The 50-minute performance is her largest yet, featuring seven sculptures that serve as a second skin for five performers from Portugal and two from London. The audience sit in a circle around the performers.

“When the audience enters the space, they become a part of the performance as well,” she says. Enveloped in knitted paper shreds from head to toe, the performers move in a subtle manner intended to convey trust and care between each other. She also curated the soundtrack for the performance, drawing on ambient sounds recorded in nature.

“It’s about connecting without separation,” Chen says. “It’s about listening to ourselves, caring about the earth and nature.”

• Questioning the Line , Coronet Theatre, London, 14-17 October