Vestbydagen: [Performance] Yi Ten Lai: 'Haunt and seek' – Kunsthal Spritten x AFGANG 2026

Experience the next generation of artists as Yi Ten Lai (b. 1996, Bailén, Spain), a new graduate of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, takes to the stage at Vestbydagen with her performance, Haunt and Seek, as part of a collaboration between Kunsthal Spritten and Kunsthal Charlottenborg.

Yi Ten Lai has a multicultural background and, in her own words, is a 'diasporic body' – a body that lives outside its homeland, whether by choice or not, but remains connected to it through language, culture or religion, for example. For Lai, this gives her a sense of always being ‘almost-but-not-quite’. This feeling forms the starting point for Lai's artistic practice, in which she explores what happens when culturally linked traditions, practices and objects pass through a body, a boundary or a generation. Do they transform into something new? Do they disappear? Or do they become a ghost of their former selves?

At Vestbydagen, you can experience the performance Haunt and Seek, in which white ghostlike spirit costumes animated by volunteers move around the festival grounds at Haraldslund Vand- og Kulturhus between 17.30-18.30, guided by herding calls, before finally gathering for a powerful sound performance at 19.30-20.00 in Haraldslund by the experimental metal collective Entrance/d, founded by artist Yi Ten Lai and musician Harald Ingvarsson. The spirit costumes, handmade of willow and silk, draw on the Chinese traditions of lion and kirin dance. They exist in a condition of diaspora: displaced, fragmented and partly forgotten.

The performance is supported by Sparekassen Danmark and Aalborg Kommunes Kulturpulje.

Photo: Yi Ten Lai, "At lære en gammel hund nye kunster (Haunt and seek)" (2026), foto af Malthe Ivarsson. Courtesy Kunsthal Charlottenborg