Alison Kuo Brings Her Grandmother's Opera World to the New Museum
New York artist Alison Kuo opens a new performance at the New Museum this week, and it starts with a false beard. Kuo inherited a costume beard that her grandmother wore as a Cantonese opera singer in Hong Kong, according to The Art Newspaper. Her grandmother played a military general, and in the new piece Kuo takes on that same role herself.
The work is called A flame latches to a bit of straw (Xin huo xiang chuan). The title is a Chinese idiom with a meaning close to "passing the torch", the handing of something from one generation to the next. The performances run from 22 to 24 October 2026 at the New Museum, a contemporary art museum on the Bowery in Manhattan.
Cantonese opera is a traditional stage form from southern China. It mixes sung performance, stylised movement and elaborate costumes. The New Museum describes the new work as drawing on traditions that are about 400 years old.
Kuo made the sets and several of the costumes herself. Her cousin Anna Kuo is among the performers, along with Mark Bolling, who is Kuo's next-door neighbour and a former go-go dancer, Mei Brunette, and Annika Cheng, a Queens-based dancer and textile artist. Local musicians play traditional Chinese instruments on the night.
The stage also includes Cantonese opera singers MeeMee Chin, Wai Wah Law and Ying Ying Zhu. All three regularly perform in Manhattan's Chinatown. Chin is Kuo's mentor, and the performance is the closing piece of Kuo's 2026 residency with the museum, where she holds the title of artist-in-residence.
Kuo's residency has included public events built around the same art form. In August, the museum held a Family Day event called Cantonese Opera Paper Dolls & Ribbon Dance. Families were invited to make paper dolls inspired by the elaborate costumes of Cantonese opera.
Kuo is a second-generation immigrant, meaning her parents moved to the United States and she was born or raised there. She researches and trains in Cantonese opera and also makes sculptures from found objects. Her performances often tell stories about the Asian diaspora, the communities of people with Asian roots who live outside Asia.
Kuo lives in Brooklyn, and the piece brings her family's history onto a New York stage, with family members, a neighbour and Chinatown performers all sharing the same floor.
