Artist: Patty Chang

Contortion
2000

Biography
1972 - Born in San Francisco, CA
1994 - BA from UC San Diego, CA
Lives and works in New York, NY

Fountain
1999
Video

Melons (At a Loss)
1998
Video

According to The New York Times, "Patty Chang's early filmed and photographed performances were hair-raisingly narcissistic. As in a mirror, she was always the subject. In one piece, she exchanged a passionate kiss with her own face reflected in water. In another, she seemed to engage in intimate lip-to-lip contact with her mother and father. In a third, she ate a melon inserted in one side of her bra, as if she were devouring her own breast."

Check out this short documentary on her work!

Shangri-la
2005
Video

"Having won out in an insane marketing battle among a dozen rural towns claiming to be the same, nonexistent earthly paradise, the lucky town of Zhongdian was finally christened by the Chinese government as the "genuine" Shangri-la in 1997," Papermag.com writes. In her 2005 video Shangri-la, Chang documents her journey to Zhongdian. "As part of her visually spectacular but completely ridiculous project, Chang also created a number of objects to help her tell the story of this strange, fake place -- like a model of an oxygen chamber used to treat altitude sickness."