Patty Chang

Patty Chang is a Los Angeles area 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. Learning Endings , her collaboration with Astrida and Aleksija Neimanis, is a multi-part interdisciplinary research project that surfaced amidst the overlapping contexts of climate crisis, threatened ocean ecosystems, and challenges to scientific expertise. Stray Dog Hydrophobia , her most recent project with David Kelley, explores deepsea mining and the entangled histories of extraction from the sea rooted in British colonialism in Jamaica. Kingston, Jamaica—where the British brought enslaved Africans to cultivate sugar, cocoa, and chocolate—is now home to the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the U.N. global body charged with regulating deep-sea mining. Stray Dog Hydrophobia is not only about deep-sea mining and marine life, but also about the layered violence of colonial histories and the extractive systems that endure. In addition to numerous awards and fellowships, her work has been exhibited at institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum, New Museum, M+ Museum in Hong Kong, and Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden. She teaches at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA.