Meet Luyao Chang

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Luyao Chang a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Luyao, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?

I was born in Japan and lived there until I was 6 years old, then moved to China with my family. In both countries, there is pervasive manipulation of information through political narratives that are crafted to serve the state’s purposes. As I became older, I started thinking more critically about my childhood experiences. For example, the friendly loving former chairman Deng Xiaoping narrated in the textbook is the arbitrator of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protest, and the story in fact is a state propaganda of Chinses Economic Reform; or the ‘touching’ documentary I watched when I visited back in Japan on TV produced by NHK, talking about how Japanese soldiers were humanistic and rescued the elephant in Bejing zoo during Second Sino-Japanese War, etc. My childhood instilled in me the necessity of vigilance, skepticism, and critical thinking. Growing up in China, I struggled to overcome a politics of the unsaid, whether social norms or outright repression of issues surrounding s*x, visibility, and labor. As an artist, my installations, sculptures, and video works aim to counter the blaring, chauvinist rhetoric of national becoming and to work towards a more inclusive historical archive. My work today is based on my experience of places that are presented to their citizens, and to the world, as utopias but are really dystopias.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

Hi, I’m Lulu Luyao Chang, a multidisciplinary artist currently based in New York. I work primarily in installation, sculpture, and video. I was born in Japan and raised in Beijing, China. I earned a BA in art history from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing in 2019, and an MFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in 2024. My work explores the political unsaid, from social norms to explicit repressions. I received an ArtTable Fellowship in 2022. I was one of the panelists of The State of LGBTQ of China organized by The China Project. My co-authored article was published on GUERNICA and my essay was published on World Art. I also have been working as a fashion model for over 6 years.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

critical thinking, open mind and always learning.
I guess for me, being an artist feels like a journey, not a destiny, also not a title or a job. Especially, being a multidisciplinary artist, I’m always learning, new inspirations, new techniques, new mediums, etc. There is always new stuff coming out in the world every single day and staying curious about the world is pretty important to me.

Okay, so before we go, is there anyone you’d like to shoutout for the role they’ve played in helping you develop the essential skills or overcome challenges along the way?

I will say I feel appreciated by my studio instructor and my mentor during my MFA program at SVA. They went through a very important period, as well as the first couple years of my artistic career. We discussed works all the time, from concept to technique, from inspiration to making it come true, from school life to career life in the art world. We still keep in touch after graduation.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://lululuyaochang.cargo.site
• Instagram: @6u6usaferoom @ruru_jyoo

Image Credits

Personal photo:
photography: David Jaelin @davidjaelin , Makeup Artist: Grant Karpin @gkarpinmua

Additional Photo:
1, 2, 7, 8: photography: Haoyu Zhao @oystersauce_haoyuzhao_official , photo edit: Lulu Luyao Chang @6u6usaferoom