Patty Chang @ Kunstverein München, German

Patty Chang’s single-take video Melons (At a Loss) (1998) has been featured as part of the onsite and online series “Schaufenster” at Kunstverein München. Through this video, Chang narrates a monologue about an imagined cultural ritual of being given a commemorative plate of her deceased aunt, who passed due to breast cancer. She simultaneously attempts to perform cutting, deseeding, and eating a cantaloupe that is held inside her long-line bra, all the while balancing a plate on her head. The melon appears to be uncannily synonymous with Chang’s breast. Chang takes a serrated knife to slice it open in an act of self-mutilation. Eating the melon, then, is also a form of a cannibalistic devouring of the self. The gesture paired with an attempt to sustain the monologue of imagined ritual becomes a site of production for the construction of memory, narrative, and gender.