Patty Chang's 2-channel video Que Sera Sera / Invocations (2013) is featured in the exhibition "For Dear Life: Art, Medicine, and Disability" at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD). This artwork engages with her father's death and the birth of her son. The video shows the artist holding her baby while singing to her father in hospice care. Another screen reveals an iPad, which Chang’s mother scrolls through while reading a series of unusual prayers: “invocation of vocal cord paralysis” follows an “invocation of artificial respiration”.
"For Dear Life: Art, Medicine, and Disability" is the first exhibition to survey themes of illness and impairment in American art from the 1960s up to the COVID-19 era. The exhibition narrates the history of recent art through the lens of disability—a term used inclusively—recognizing the vulnerable body to be a crucial throughline for art in the United States amid the upheavals and transformations of past decades.
