Confessions

Confessions is a participatory installation that reveals anonymous confessions in the public realm. Inspired by Japanese Shinto shrine prayer walls and the practices of Catholicism, Chang invited people to write and submit a confession on a wooden plaque in the privacy of confession booths. The plaques are then hung on the gallery walls. The project reappropriates religious rites for secular environments and examines the relationship between public space and emotional communion. The original exhibit in The Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas collected over 1,500 confessions and included an original soundtrack by Oliver Blank. The project has since grown to over 20,000 confessions in other cities.

Responses ranged from the light-hearted to the profound: I still love her two girlfriends and five years later — It’s hard for me to accept my father. I feel guilty for that — Everyone thinks I quit smoking, but I didn’t — I hate that all my friends are having children and turning into boring people — I sold heroin to my friend and it ruined his life — my social media is so fake — Sometimes I worry that I’m the problem — I’m in love with two men — I knew my marriage would end in divorce before I was married — I like it when my friends are mediocre so I can be the best — I’m in the military and I’m scared to die — I’m a feminist but sometimes I wish I could have been a trophy wife — I don’t believe in an afterlife anymore, but I wish that I did — I love cats and hate my sister.

Originally commissioned by Art Production Fund and The Cosmopolitan, the participatory installation has since been exhibited in other cities, including Athens, Greece with Onassis Cultural Centre (2016); Minsk, Belarus with Ў Gallery of Contemporary Art (2016), London, England with Merge Festival (2017), Yerevan, Armenia with Karoyan Gallery (2017), Stepanakert, Azerbaijan with ARTsakh Fest (2018), San Diego, California with Wonderspaces (2019); Scottsdale, Arizona with Wonderspaces (2019-2020).