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Migration

Another way to think about vibrant matter in Chang’s work is to engage the concept of migration – the forced and voluntary movement of people, ideas, and objects around the globe. What happens when we cross borders? When we relocate? When we are labeled “foreign” or “alien” or not of this place? Symbols in Chang’s work travel across boundaries, transformed by encounters with other forms. Her formal systems suggest the invented structures and borders in which we operate – rules, constraints, and possibilities made visible and material. Colors shift and shapes transform, a visual metaphor, she told me, for how we are pushed and pulled and restrained. Inspired by the visual and technical components of weaving, Chang engages patterns to explore the personal and political forces and systems that shape and misshape our lives: narratives, cultures, myths, institutions, and expectations. Her work shows both constraint and possibility, the discipline of the state and our own self-discipline. Arrivals, foreignness, dislocation, the struggle to feel at home in one’s own body – Chang uses line and color to make visible hidden histories and the longing, anxiety, fear, alienation, and desire for belonging she finds there. How might the world look different if migration were a human right?

-Sarah Sentilles