Patty CHANG (Boston)

Invocation for a Wandering Lake Part 1, 2014, single-channel video, color, sound, 12’47”.

Using water as a medium of politics and poetics, the artist gently bathes the corpse of a beached sperm whale, and an abandoned ship, in an act of ablution and mourning; a meditation on the detrimental environmental effects and traumatic legacies of colonialism, capitalism, and globalization. Filmed on location at Wandering Lake Xinjiang, China, sea coast of Newfoundland, Canada, Aral Sea Muynak, Uzbekistan.

About the artist:

Patty Chang’s explores narrative, empathy, the unknown and the document in her performances recorded as short films. She often plays a central role in her work, which is notorious for testing the acceptable boundaries of taste and endurance. She has been widely exhibited through group and solo shows in major international cities. She is a 2014 recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship and recently exhibited her video installation, Flotsam Jetsam (2007), a collaboration with David Kelley, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She has also appeared in group shows and performances at Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, the International Center of Photography, New York, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.