LEWISTON – A Bates College Museum of Art installation by Chinese artist Wenda Gu will close with a reception and a performance piece by him at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 9, in Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St.

Gu, one of the most important artists to emerge from China in recent decades, according to the Museum of Art, will perform “Wenda Gu’s Wedding Life No. 6.”

The piece, says museum Director Mark Bessire, is a new chapter in a series of performances, the most recent of which was last year at the opening of the Guangzhou Triennial at the Guangdong Museum of Art in China.

In a collaboration unusual for Maine’s academic museums, the Bates museum and the Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art in Portland jointly presented his installation, “From Middle Kingdom to Biological Millennium,” this year. The installations and the performance piece reflect the Gu’s belief that eventually the “biological millennium” will bring all races together into one mixed group, thus ending cultural conflict.

Symbolic vow

In Gu’s performances he symbolically weds a partner from another culture or ethnicity. Gu and his “bride,” performed by Sagaree Sengupta of Lewiston will arrive at the museum in a white limousine, welcomed by young people dressed in red. The couple will exchange wedding vows under the guidance of a justice of the peace, performed by Bessire.

Each participant will consider the creation of vows and then write the program together. Using huge ink brushes and sheets of paper spread on the floor, the bride and groom will write or draw important aspects of their life leading up to the marriage. After the vows are exchanged, they will draw together their aspirations for the future.

The performance will be presented around and under the Upper Gallery installation “united nations – 7561 kilometers.” The installation, 21st in a worldwide series, is a collection of hair from around the world brought together into a monument symbolizing the unification of cultures.

Meanwhile, showing in the Lower Gallery are “New Acquisitions: Local and Global Contemporary Photography,” which closes in May; and “Marsden Hartley: Image and Identity,” which closes Dec. 18 and is the focus of a museum symposium on Nov. 5 and 6.

The artist’s vision

Gu was active in the Chinese avant-garde before emigrating to the United States in 1987.

“Wenda Gu’s work is timely in its ambitious attempt to address in artistic terms the issue of globalism that dominates discussions of contemporary economics, society and culture. The enormous scope of his vision – conceiving of his artwork as existing over time and space and not constrained by convention, language or national boundaries – is remarkable,” Bessire writes in the exhibition publication, the first major scholarly publication on Gu.

Bessire edited the publication and, with counterparts at museums in Kansas and Texas, co-curated the exhibition.

The museum is open to the public at no cost. Its hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday. It’s closed Sundays and major holidays. For more information, call 207-786-6158.