We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Luyao Chang. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Luyao below.

Luyao, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

Thank you as well, yes, definitely. I think a project that meant a lot to me probably is my last year project An Intimate Relationship (2023) which is a series of mixed media sculptures and a video installation that I created to explore individual and political identity through gestures and objects associated with intimate relationships. As an artist born in China and raised in Japan, the exploration of political and personal identity is a central theme in my work. This series represents, through political symbols, the traumatic impact of intimacy. The installation is like a wedding scene, becoming a liminal space. It reflects my own experiences with political trauma as well as the collective, inherited trauma of my parents’ generation.

The sculptures in this series are made of paper that I took from Chinese, history, and political science textbooks—the same ones that I studied between elementary and high school. I crush, soak, stir, and mix the textbooks with putty powder, then reshape them into new objects. The Ring #1 (2023), one of them, shows two male hands dyed red and pink putting a ‘wedding ring’, a red star communist symbol badge as the ‘diamond’ and a golden chain as the ring part, on the ring finger of a female hand. Red symbolizes communism, while pink represents the romanticized nationalism and patriotism that drive political discourse. It showed how state propaganda and education have shaped my generation. By dismantling and rebuilding propaganda, I also represent how I have rebelled, retraced, and reinvented myself.

And the video takes its title from “An Unforgettable Day,” a short story from a second-grade Chinese textbook. It is told in the first-person view of a young child who demonstrates a computer for Deng Xiaoping. As an eight-year-old, I was struck by the friendly, loving portrayal of the famed Party leader. I recited the story at home that night: “Grandpa Deng is so cute”, to my mom. And she said “You have no idea what he actually did.” Then it was the first time I had heard of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protest and Massacre. It helped me understand how a child’s point of view can be used as political propaganda for Chinese Economic Reform, and how education and information have been manipulated to hide the truth.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Hi, I’m Lulu Luyao Chang, a multidisciplinary artist currently based in New York. I received my bachelor’s degree in art history from Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 2019, and currently study in the MFA Fine Arts program at the School of Visual Arts in New York. 

Born in Japan and raised in Beijing, I’ve been exposed to diverse information from both countries. This early experience illuminated the pervasive manipulation of information, each state crafting narratives to serve its own purposes. It instilled in me the necessity to always vigilant discernment and perpetual critical thinking to navigate the complexities of truth. Especially living my most time in China, I’ve been subjected to and struggled to overcome a politics of the unsaid—whether through social norms or outright repression, many important issues surrounding s*x, recognition, and labor are silenced in the places they have lived. I work primarily in installation and new media art, to make my voice heard within the blaring, chauvinist rhetoric of national becoming and to work towards a more inclusive historical archive.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I believe being an artist is a privilege in itself. It grants me the freedom to express my thoughts, feelings, and concerns through art, sharing them with the public. The fact that there are viewers who genuinely care and take my work seriously is both an honor and a blessing for me.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I don’t feel there’s a particular goal maybe, but sometimes I do feel like hope my voice through art could be heard to a broader scale, especially while I worked on social engaged projects. I hope that through my art, I can provide a different angle to think and the real side on things or living experiences in China to the viewers, and contribute to a wider conversation on certain incidents or phenomenon.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/6u6usaferoom/
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/luyao-chang-28b6a5271

Image Credits
The first, fifth and sixth ones are shot by Haoyu Zhao.