Portrait of a Rebel: Candy Chang
(By Elizabeth Tuico) I’m working on a new creative project and thinking about those who inspire me. I keep coming back to Candy Chang. If you haven’t heard of her, Candy is an urban planner and artist who cleverly invokes public spaces to examine the dynamics between society and the human psyche.
Her vast portfolio promotes participatory public installations of anonymous, handwritten notes and reproductions of these observations through video, painting, and mixed media. The future of ritual in public life along with traditional Asian arts inspires her as well as over one million contributions from strangers exposing their anxieties, hopes, pains, and moments of grace found in her work.
Before I Die ___
I heard Candy speak twice in Washington, D.C. She is best known for her public art project Before I Die ___ . In 2018, I participated in the installation at the Smithsonian Institution’s American Art Museum. This global art project invites people to reflect upon their mortality and consider the things that matter most. I returned to the museum several times to read the provoking and personal inscriptions, awed by its organic expansion.
“Before I Die is merely one of the most creative community projects ever.”—The Atlantic
How are these ___ blanks filled in? The exhibit starts with nothing, and then takes shape as visitors write their answers on plywood cards or post-it notes. The concept is simple yet very powerful.
Candy originally created Before I Die ____ in New Orleans after the death of a loved one. Today, more than 5,000 installations exist around the world. Her TED Talk explaining the process garnered over five million views. See it here: https://www.ted.com/talks/candy_chang_before_i_die_i_want_to
The Creative Process
The creative process differs from artist to artist. How much is strategic or just plain serendipity? Writer and artist Austin Kleon built on a career on a famous quote from Pablo Picasso: art is theft. Austin asserts that everything builds on what came before, so a new idea is just a mashup or remix of a previous concept. Nothing is completely original.
When it comes to Candy Chang’s work, I disagree with Austin. I’ve spent the last 40 years looking at art, and Candy is one-of-a-kind. In an interview with Mural Arts Philadelphia, Candy discusses her creative process:
Ideas come when I’m open-minded and follow my questions. I’ve stumbled on so many things that have changed the course of my life by that process. I think it’s good to have goals, but it might be even greater to embrace serendipity and allow random experiences to become meaningful to you. I can only have new insight into my life and work when I’m receptive to it. When I’m interested in pursuing a conceptual public art idea, I make mood boards of sketches and images and brainstorm all the ways it could work. That’s my favorite part—it’s loose and full of divergent possibilities. Then I start researching and working out what’s feasible with project partners. The constraints and opportunities through that process also help shape the final project.
Her Latest Project: The Nightly News
Moving on from bucket lists to the subconscious mind, Candy served as the Innovator-in-Residence at the American School in London in 2022 to work on a new participatory public installation on dreams. The Nightly News represents anxiety, desire, and other possible worlds that fill our heads at night. What we remember is the catalyst for this project.
The interactive installation invites visitors to anonymously write down a short line from a dream they remember, which is then scanned and projected onto a screen. All responses come together to create an ongoing contribution of cinematic, surreal experiences that reflect a community’s subconscious.
“It reminded me that we’re all deeply weird creatures bound together by nerves, fantasy, and the surreal. Themes emerged: we fall, we flee, and we search for answers,” says Candy. “Our teeth fall out, we run through hallways in the sky, and we get stabbed with forks. I think I prefer getting to know everyone through their subconscious lives.” More here.
The Candyland Resume
Through a series of large-scale projects that combine installation art with social activism, Chang has encouraged people to engage with public spaces to let their voices be heard. – O Magazine
A TED Senior Fellow, Urban Innovation Fellow, and World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, Candy creates installations for people to share their visions for vacant storefronts, a confessional sanctuary in a Las Vegas casino, designated sites for crying in Hong Kong, and a civic tool called Neighborland.com for neighbors to advise on the future of their communities.
She received grants from the National Endowment of the Arts, Hemera Foundation, and Rockefeller Foundation. Her work has been exhibited in the Venice Architecture Biennale, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. After years residing in New York, New Orleans, and Helsinki, she now lives in the Mojave Desert.
For more of Candy’s work and ideas, check out her Instagram, appropriately called CandyChangland.
Selected Public Art and Exhibitions:
2023
The Night News, MSU Broad Art Museum, East Lansing, Michigan, March 4 – May 28, 2023.
2022
The Nightly News, The American School in London, London, England, February – April 2022.
Before I Die, Wonderspaces, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, September 15, 2021 – April 2023.
Before I Die, Wonderspaces, Scottsdale, Arizona, June 30, 2021 – June 30, 2022.
2021
After the End, Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York, September 15 – December 6, 2021
Light the Barricades, WALLS: Defend, Divide, and the Divine, The Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina, February 24 -July 25, 2021.
Before I Die, Wonderspaces, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, September 15, 2021 – April 2023.
Before I Die, Wonderspaces, Scottsdale, Arizona, June 30, 2021 – June 30, 2022.
A Collective Curiosity: Her Voice in the Arts, Lamont Gallery, Exeter, New Hampshire, January 19 – June 6, 2021.
2020
No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man, Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, California, October 12, 2019 – February 16, 2020.
Confessions, Elsewhere, Wonderspaces, Scottsdale, Arizona, October 12 – January 1, 2020.
2019
Light the Barricades, WALLS: Defend, Divide, and the Divine, Annenberg Space for Photography, Los Angeles, California, September 5 – December 29, 2019.
Art of the City: Postmodern to Post-Katrina, The Helis Foundation and Historic New Orleans Collection, April 6 – October 6, 2019.
No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man, Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio, April 26 – September 2, 2019.
Confessions, In Common, Wonderspaces, San Diego, California, June 7 – September 1, 2019.
Before I Die, Arts Center of Mississippi, Greater Jackson Arts Council, Jackson, Mississippi, 2019.
2018
A Monument for the Anxious and Hopeful, The Rubin Museum of Art, New York, New York, February 10, 2018 – January 7, 2019.
Confessions, ARTsakh Fest, Institute of Contemporary Art, Stepanakert, Artsakh, Azerbaijan, October 5 – 7, 2018.
No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., March 30, 2018 – January 21, 2019.
Before I Die, Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, Missouri, 2018.
The Takeaway: Observe What Is Around You
Inspiring people and events remain all around us. We’re often too distracted to discover what’s right in front of us. Turn off your device, take off your headphones, engage your senses, and just be. You will be surprised at what you’ve been missing.
Elizabeth Tuico owns Rebel Road Creative, a marketing and content writing consultancy. She is based in Washington, D.C. Get in touch.