Events

University of Oregon 2025-26 Visiting Artist Lecture Series Presented by the Department of Art and Center for Art Research

Abyssal is about what is on land and in the ocean and what connects the two through migration and the ocean itself. It traces the history of porcelain, of Europe and Asia, of transpacific migration, of women’s labor, and its lack of recognition, of the intertidal. When first imported to Europe, porcelain was a mystery. True Chinese porcelain is luminous—when held up to the light, it appears translucent. Europeans didn’t know how it was made, conjecturing that it was made from seashells. Kings hired alchemists to find the recipe for porcelain, and they eventually made it themselves with a different type of clay. This initial contact with Asia and China set up the dynamic of desire—the mystery of the object that underpins the West’s view of the East. This dynamic carries through to the present day culturally, specifically through the desire and objectification of Asian women’s bodies. Bodies that labor and give care.

Patty Chang is a Los Angeles based artist and educator using performance, video, installation and narrative forms. Notable awards and honors include Kohler Maker Space Residency in Sheboygan, WI, Anonymous Was a Woman Grant, and Creative Capital Grant amongst others. In addition to numerous residencies, and fellowships, her work has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum, New Museum, M+ Museum in Hong Kong, MAAP in Brisbane, Australia, Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in Manila, Philippines, and Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden. Chang currently teaches at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. 

This lecture is made possible by the George and Matilda Fowler Endowment Fund.

University of Oregon 2025-26 Visiting Artist Lecture Series Presented by the Department of Art and Center for Art Research

Fred H. C. Liang’s recent work combines jianzhi (traditional Chinese paper cutting) with porcelain to explore cultural exchange between East and West. His installations investigate how ideas and people are disseminated, appropriated, and transformed through global encounters. Liang excavates buried histories to uncover hidden narratives that continue to shape identity and aesthetics. He invites viewers down a rabbit hole of historical and contemporary events, where unexpected connections emerge and alternate realities unfold. Rooted in materials often associated with craft and domesticity, Liang’s immersive, three-dimensional environments made from pliable paper and ceramic reimagine familiar forms. Through this process, he bridges memory and material, creating space for reflection on how rituals, traditions, and iconography are inherited and reshaped across time and culture. His work prompts a visual dialogue on the fragility and impermanence of personal and collective histories, ultimately deconstructing and re-contextualizing cultural forms to illuminate the invisible structures that govern our lives.

Fred H. C. Liang is a Boston-based artist and professor at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. He holds a BFA from the University of Manitoba and an MFA from Yale University. Liang’s work, which explores cultural exchange through printmaking, paper cutting, and ceramics, has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the ICA Boston, Inside Out Museum (Beijing), Currier Museum of Art, and Milwaukee Art Museum. His work is held in public and private collections such as Fidelity, the Gund Collection, the Addison Museum of American Art, and the Rose Art Museum. Liang has been recognized with grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Joan Mitchell Foundation (2020), and the Boston Foundation’s Brother Thomas Fellowship (2021). He has completed residencies at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (Santiago, Chile) and the Swatch Art Peace Hotel (Shanghai). His work has been featured in HuffPost, WBUR Open Studio, and The Boston Globe.

This lecture is made possible by the Gilkey Foundation Fund.