Lulu Luyao Chang
In 2022, she was awarded the ArtTable Fellowship and served as a panelist for The State of LGBTQ in China organized by The China Project. Her recent solo exhibition at the Chinese American Arts Council (CAAC) | Gallery 456 in New York City in 2024 was reviewed in IMPULSE Magazine. Lulu’s work has been featured in several prominent art fairs, including Art Fair | Detroit, Zero Art Fair in upstate New York, and group shows at Latitude Gallery, IRL Gallery, LatchKey Gallery, etc. in New York City. Her video artwork has been screened at The China Project in NYC and at Aotu Space in Beijing. In addition, her writing includes an essay published in the academic journal World Art and a co-authored article featured in GUERNICA Magazine.
Lulu holds an MFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York and a BA in Art History from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.
Oct 6, 2025
Hi Lulu! It’s such an honor to have you today. Could you introduce yourself and your background?
My name is Luyao Chang, but I go by Lulu. I’m a multidisciplinary artist and educator based between Chicago and New York. I was born in Hyogo, Japan and raised in Beijing, China. My practice spans installation, sculpture, and video, often drawing inspiration from children’s objects to explore systems of control, memory, and identity. I hold an MFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York and a BA in Art History from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Rooted in my transnational upbringing, my work centers non-binary, and diasporic perspectives.
My name is Luyao Chang, but I go by Lulu. I’m a multidisciplinary artist and educator based between Chicago and New York. I was born in Hyogo, Japan and raised in Beijing, China. My practice spans installation, sculpture, and video, often drawing inspiration from children’s objects to explore systems of control, memory, and identity. I hold an MFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York and a BA in Art History from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Rooted in my transnational upbringing, my work centers non-binary, and diasporic perspectives.
As an artist, what are some themes that you often work with?
As an artist, I’m drawn to themes of control, memory, and identity, particularly how they are shaped by political, social, and cultural systems. I often use childhood objects and educational materials to explore the tension between play and discomfort, examining how authority and discipline are internalized early on. My practice, which includes installation, sculpture, video, and ceramics, also engages with ideas of fragmentation, inherited trauma, and the aesthetics of order. Working with clay allows me to translate these concepts into tactile, intimate forms that reference the body and evoke care, vulnerability, and resistance. I aim to create environments that feel both familiar and unsettling, spaces that invite reflection on the systems we inhabit and inherit.
Your work involves different kinds of materials. Could you share how you approach choosing materials and how they shape your work?
Clay has played a central role in my practice recently. I’m drawn to its tactile, intuitive nature, its softness, fragility, and unpredictability. Working with clay is a slow, physical process, full of cracks, warping, and other imperfections that I see as the material’s own language. These qualities mirror many of the themes in my work: vulnerability, instability, and transformation.
I often work with materials that hold both tactile immediacy and emotional familiarity—like ceramics, old textbooks, toys and other found objects. Some, like ceramics and playthings, evoke memories of childhood, while others, such as metal chains or synthetic hair, introduce a sense of unease, restraint and embodiment. I’m drawn to how these contrasting elements coexist, creating tension between playfulness and discomfort. My ceramic sculptures may initially resemble oversized toys, but a closer look reveals unsettling details that complicate their sweetness. This push and pull are central to my practice—using material not just for its form, but for the emotional and cultural weight it carries.
You mentioned social concepts like utopia and dystopia. Could you elaborate on these concepts?
Utopia and dystopia are central concepts in my work because they help me explore the tension between what we’re told is ideal and what’s actually lived. I’m trying to build/reflect an in-between state, where comfort and control always coexist, where care masks discipline. Growing up between cultures and identities, I often felt suspended between worlds, which now shapes my approach to world-building in my art. I use familiar materials and childhood references to construct spaces that feel both tender and unsettling. These imagined environments are neither fully utopic nor dystopic, but rather non-binary spaces that resist categorization. They reflect the complexities of queer, diasporic experience, offering alternative ways of seeing and belonging outside rigid systems.
What does a multi-cultural upbringing mean to you as an artist?
Growing up between Japan and China exposed me early on to conflicting histories and shifting narratives, which unsettled my sense of “home” and belonging from a young age. Moving to China at six created a rupture that made me question identity and place—questions that continue to shape my work. Now living in the U.S., this feeling of being between worlds deepens. I’m not formally recognized as an immigrant, and I exist in a liminal space—neither fully accepted nor settled. This layered sense of displacement fuels my artistic exploration. As an artist, my multicultural background compels me to examine how memory, identity, and belonging are constantly negotiated and reconstructed. Through fragile materials like clay and found objects, I create installations that embody this tension and invite reflection on what it means to build “home” across cultures and borders.
Can you talk more about critical thinking and what role it plays in your work?
Critical thinking in my work arises from navigating the tensions between official histories and personal experiences. Growing up across cultures, I witnessed how authorities shape narratives by controlling information, deeply impacting collective memory. This awareness drives me to question dominant truths and explore the spaces where conflicting perspectives overlap. My practice reflects this complexity, using layered materials and imagery to reveal the coexistence of opposing forces and the challenges of living between them.
For me, critical thinking means resisting simplistic answers and embracing ambiguity. It invites both me and the viewer to confront multiple, often suppressed narratives, challenging binary thinking and opening new ways to understand power, identity, and memory.
My work embraces this duality, playfulness mixed with unease, control interwoven with resistance, inviting reflection on the layered realities we inhabit. Through this approach, I aim to hold complexity without closure, creating space for diverse, hidden stories to surface and encouraging deeper engagement with the nuances of experience.
Can you share a project that is meaningful to you?
One project that holds deep meaning for me is On the WarmBed, my first site-specific installation and part of my first solo exhibition. It was a continuation of my WarmBed series, featuring eighteen hand-built ceramic sculptures. While the earlier work, WarmBed #2, presented these sculptures stacked like oversized children’s blocks, the newest edition captured a moment of collapse—blocks suspended mid-fall, hanging in the air by metal chains. This shift marked a transition from stability to rupture, emphasizing fragility and tension.
At first glance, the bright colors and playful forms recall childhood nostalgia. But closer inspection reveals unsettling details: scattered strands of synthetic hair, delicate chains, and star-shaped hearts encased in resin capsules. These subtle cues introduce unease beneath the surface, alluding to the hidden pressures that often accompany seemingly safe environments.
The title WarmBed comes from the Chinese phrase 温床 (wēn chuáng), which can refer both to a literal warm bed suggesting comfort and care, and metaphorically to a breeding ground, an environment where harmful or unwelcome elements grow quietly, often unnoticed. I was drawn to this duality, as it mirrors the way authoritarian control can be embedded subtly in systems that appear nurturing. The installation uses fragile ceramics, suspended forms, and hidden details to evoke this tension, between safety and danger,
innocence and manipulation, exploring how repression can be quietly normalized under the appearance of stability.
This project marked an important evolution in my practice. While I have consistently worked with installation, On the WarmBed was the first time I used clay at such a large scale to construct an immersive environment. It deepened my commitment to creating spaces that hold space for complex, layered narratives—where innocence and discomfort, collapse and suspension, can coexist in tension.
Looking forward, are there new materials and themes you're excited to explore in your next body of work?
I’m excited to scale up The Dream of the Butterfly into a fully immersive experience and to continue experimenting with materials that carry both symbolic and tactile significance. Lately, I’ve been drawn to sand, a material often associated with play and ephemerality yet also used in construction to build foundations. I’m fascinated by its duality: unstable and fluid, yet capable of forming the structures of our world. I want to explore the challenge of suspending this shifting material, freezing it in a moment of collapse or transformation, to evoke tension between permanence and impermanence. These material explorations allow me to further investigate the fragile boundaries between control and release, softness and severity, while deepening my commitment to building environments that hold and complicate emotional and political narratives.
Can you talk more about critical thinking and what role it plays in your work?
Critical thinking in my work arises from navigating the tensions between official histories and personal experiences. Growing up across cultures, I witnessed how authorities shape narratives by controlling information, deeply impacting collective memory. This awareness drives me to question dominant truths and explore the spaces where conflicting perspectives overlap. My practice reflects this complexity, using layered materials and imagery to reveal the coexistence of opposing forces and the challenges of living between them.
For me, critical thinking means resisting simplistic answers and embracing ambiguity. It invites both me and the viewer to confront multiple, often suppressed narratives, challenging binary thinking and opening new ways to understand power, identity, and memory.
My work embraces this duality, playfulness mixed with unease, control interwoven with resistance, inviting reflection on the layered realities we inhabit. Through this approach, I aim to hold complexity without closure, creating space for diverse, hidden stories to surface and encouraging deeper engagement with the nuances of experience.
Can you share a project that is meaningful to you?
One project that holds deep meaning for me is On the WarmBed, my first site-specific installation and part of my first solo exhibition. It was a continuation of my WarmBed series, featuring eighteen hand-built ceramic sculptures. While the earlier work, WarmBed #2, presented these sculptures stacked like oversized children’s blocks, the newest edition captured a moment of collapse—blocks suspended mid-fall, hanging in the air by metal chains. This shift marked a transition from stability to rupture, emphasizing fragility and tension.
At first glance, the bright colors and playful forms recall childhood nostalgia. But closer inspection reveals unsettling details: scattered strands of synthetic hair, delicate chains, and star-shaped hearts encased in resin capsules. These subtle cues introduce unease beneath the surface, alluding to the hidden pressures that often accompany seemingly safe environments.
The title WarmBed comes from the Chinese phrase 温床 (wēn chuáng), which can refer both to a literal warm bed suggesting comfort and care, and metaphorically to a breeding ground, an environment where harmful or unwelcome elements grow quietly, often unnoticed. I was drawn to this duality, as it mirrors the way authoritarian control can be embedded subtly in systems that appear nurturing. The installation uses fragile ceramics, suspended forms, and hidden details to evoke this tension, between safety and danger,
innocence and manipulation, exploring how repression can be quietly normalized under the appearance of stability.
This project marked an important evolution in my practice. While I have consistently worked with installation, On the WarmBed was the first time I used clay at such a large scale to construct an immersive environment. It deepened my commitment to creating spaces that hold space for complex, layered narratives—where innocence and discomfort, collapse and suspension, can coexist in tension.
Looking forward, are there new materials and themes you're excited to explore in your next body of work?
I’m excited to scale up The Dream of the Butterfly into a fully immersive experience and to continue experimenting with materials that carry both symbolic and tactile significance. Lately, I’ve been drawn to sand, a material often associated with play and ephemerality yet also used in construction to build foundations. I’m fascinated by its duality: unstable and fluid, yet capable of forming the structures of our world. I want to explore the challenge of suspending this shifting material, freezing it in a moment of collapse or transformation, to evoke tension between permanence and impermanence. These material explorations allow me to further investigate the fragile boundaries between control and release, softness and severity, while deepening my commitment to building environments that hold and complicate emotional and political narratives.