Patty Chang

- is a Los Angeles based artist and educator who uses performance, video, installation and narrative forms when considering identity, gender, transnationalism, colonial legacies, the environment, large-scale infrastructural projects and impacted subjectivities. After receiving her Bachelor of Fine Arts from University of California, San Diego, Chang moved to New York and became a fixture in the performance scene. Influenced by performance artists like Marina Abramovic and Ana Mendieta, as well as filmmakers such as Jean Coctaeu, Chang’s art utilizes her own body in feats of endurance, captured on film or in photographs, and creates surrealist films that have been shown in film festivals around the world. Chang acts as a protagonist in many of her own works: either overtly highlighted in live or recorded performance or as in her film “Shangri-La,” omnipresent despite limited screen time. Her museum exhibition and book The Wandering Lake investigates the landscapes impacted by large scale human-engineered water projects such as the Soviet mission to irrigate the waters from the Aral Sea, as well as the longest aqueduct in the world, the North to South Water Diversion Project in China. Her most recent multichannel video project Milk Debt combines the act of lactation with people’s unspoken fears. She teaches at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA.