Candy Chang is an American artist whose work uncovers the psychological layers within communities. Through installations, video, and paintings generated from thousands of handwritten confessions from the public, her work examines language, embodiment, and ritual to reveal new possibilities for communion today.
Trained in architecture, design, and urban planning, Chang first used street art as a tool for civic engagement before shifting her focus to the psyche. Her public interventions collect handwritten testimonies of desire, dread, sorrow, hope, and courage, challenging norms of visibility and modes of communion. Before I Die has been created in over 5,000 cities in over 75 countries. After the End was a 2021 New York Times Critic’s Pick. Her installations also include secular spaces for confession, a monument of over 50,000 anxieties and hopes, and electrified shrines that merge the civic and the sacred.
The child of Taiwanese immigrants, Chang is influenced by Asian traditions which have worshipped and displayed handwriting as art for centuries. As the steward of hundreds of thousands of handwritten reflections, she recontextualizes these sentiments into compositions on the aspirations and disasters of living in the early 21st century. Her work has been exhibited in the Venice Architecture Biennale, Smithsonian American Art Museum, SFMOMA, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Nelson-Atkins Museum, and the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum. She is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Asian Cultural Council, Black Rock Arts Foundation, and Rockefeller Foundation. She is an Asian Cultural Council Fellow, TED Senior Fellow, World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, Urban Innovation Fellow, and was named one of the Top 100 Leaders in Public Interest Design.
She has given talks at TED, Walker Art Center, American Planning Association, Center for Architecture, Vivid Sydney Festival, and many universities and civic organizations. Born in Pittsburgh, she grew up in Ohio and has lived in many places including New York City, New Orleans, Helsinki, Philadelphia, and the Mojave Desert, and spent time at artist residencies in Iceland, Portugal, Greece, Finland, England, and Taiwan. She currently lives by the Scioto River in Ohio.
Education
M.S. Urban Planning, Columbia University, New York, NY
B.S. Architecture, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
B.A. Design, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Contact
Speaking inquiries: The Lavin Agency | Email
Art inquiries: Email
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