Patty Chang @ Macalline Center of Art, Beijing

Solo Exhibition "We Are All Mothers"
From July 10 to October 10, 2022, Macalline Art Center is proud to present solo exhibition: “We Are All Mothers” for Chinese-American artist Patty Chang.
We Are All Mothers” is Patty Chang’s first institutional solo show in China. Chang emerged in the New York alternative art scene in the mid-1990s, re-examining the critical parameters of body politics and identity construction with challenging performance and video works. The exhibition takes its name from Chang’s latest video essay We Are All Mothers (2022), where the artist reflects on observing a porpoise necropsy as part of Learning Endings, her collaboration with wildlife pathologist Aleksija Neimanis and ecofeminist writer Astrida Neimanis. The results of the scientist’s investigation into the creature’s cause of death were recorded in an animal rescue database. The meetings online, the explanation of the necropsy, and the washing of the dolphin’s body comprise a ritual of death. In the film, the artist uses memory game cards to build a visual archive for the deceased dolphin, delving into the deeper emotional connections between organisms in a moving, contemplative way. We Are All Mothers is a continuation of Chang’s exploration into the themes of care and trauma within an extremely fluid creative practice. Previously, in Milk Debt (2020), Chang examined the similarities between letting go of anxiety and breastfeeding. Performers from different places pump breast milk while reading aloud lists of fears that take different forms, thereby reflecting insecurity and systemic oppression on a larger scale.
From this point, the exhibition moves back through the artist’s previous work of performance and loss in everyday life. In Love (2001) depicts the artist and her parents exploring what at first seems to be a long kiss, Que Sera Sera / Invocations (2013-2017) engages with her father’s death and the birth of her son, and the Letdown (Milk) (2017) series of photographs offers a record of abandoned breast milk while searching for a shrinking body of water. Through deeper relationships that connect images and text, body and will, and other mediums, Chang reveals the shared losses of the individual and the collective, so that we can reconsider the process of healing.
2022.07.10 - 2022.10.10
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