Spectres of orientalism: Patty Chang and Chinese American art in the pandemic

Abstract

This article addresses the work of Chinese American interdisciplinary artist Patty Chang over a 25-year period that begins with her groundbreaking short form videos in the 1990s, and considers transitional works in the mid-2000s that led the artist to create two major bodies of work connecting identity issues with climate change since 2009. I discuss Chang’s influence on subsequent generations of Chinese American and Asian American artists, her prescient use of online aesthetics and her complex engagement with the political, social and ecological realities of mainland China and neighbouring Uzbekistan. After contextualizing Chang’s influence through the lens of her inclusion in the group exhibition Wonderland with nine other Chinese Diasporic artists, I consider the impact of COVID-19 and anti-Asian violence in the United States and globally on the direction of Chang’s work and discuss the experience of curating her recent project during the pandemic shutdown.