Artist Bio

Through the activation of public spaces around the world, Taiwanese-American artist Candy Chang creates work that uncovers the complexity of our inner lives. Her practice includes participatory public installations of anonymous, handwritten reflections, as well as reproductions of these reflections through video, painting, and mixed media. She is interested in the future of ritual in public life and merging traditional Asian arts with the modern psyche. She is the steward of over one million handwritten anxieties, hopes, pains, and moments of grace in the early 21st century.

She is most known for her public installation Before I Die, which reimagines how the walls of our cities can help us grapple with mortality and meaning as a community today. Over 5,000 Before I Die walls have been created by communities in over 75 counties, and The Atlantic called it “one of the most creative community projects ever.” Trained in architecture, urban planning, and design, she started creating street art while running a record label and then used the same tactics to create participatory art addressing the state of our neighborhoods. After struggling with grief and depression, she used this medium to reflect on the state of our psyches. She has created a monument of over 50,000 anxieties and hopes, secular spaces for confessions, and electrified shrines on emotional barriers. Her ritual on loss was a 2021 New York Times Critic’s Pick. She has worked with organizations including Art Production Fund, the Rubin Museum of Art, Mural Arts Philadelphia, and the Annenberg Foundation. She often collaborates with James A. Reeves to merge participatory art with site-specific video installations.

She is a TED Senior Fellow, Urban Innovation Fellow, and World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, and was named one of the Top 100 Leaders in Public Interest Design. She is a recipient of grants from the National Endowment of the Arts, Hemera Foundation, and Rockefeller Foundation. Her work has been exhibited in the Venice Architecture Biennale, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. After years in New York, New Orleans, and Helsinki, she now lives in the Mojave Desert.

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