Seven dancers, one set of maps: Movana Chen brings Questioning the Line to London

Seven performers knitted into the same shredded maps are moving as one in Notting Hill this week.

Artist Movana Chen leads the cast in Questioning the Line at the Coronet Theatre in Notting Hill, London, from 14 to 17 October 2026. The show lasts 50 minutes. The audience sits in a circle around the performers.

Each performer wears a Body Container, a wearable sculpture knitted from shredded maps. The seven connected pieces were developed between 2005 and 2025. The London run is the largest staging of the series so far, and it coincides with Frieze London, the capital's annual contemporary art fair, The Art Newspaper.

Chen performs herself alongside six others. Five performers travelled from Portugal and two are based in London. Performances run at 7:30pm from Wednesday 14 to Saturday 17 October, with standard tickets priced at £25, according to listings details published by the Coronet Theatre.

Chen moved from Hong Kong to Lisbon five years ago and now uses the Portuguese capital as her primary base. Questioning the Line first took shape in 2023, when she was reflecting on Covid-19 social distancing and travel lockdowns. She then spent 21 days travelling in a van across Europe with performer Francisco Borges and cinematographer Tyler Weinberger to develop the work.

The piece has already travelled. It appeared in the Encounters sector at Art Basel Hong Kong 2025, presented by Flowers Gallery. Chen's work was also shown at Contextile 2026 in Guimarães, Portugal, and is held in the collections of M+ in Hong Kong and the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane.

What makes this stand out is the closeness. The performers cannot move freely without pulling on each other. The work combines dance and wearable sculpture to question ideas of identity and connection, and forms part of Chen's long-running Body Containers series.