Viewing Room Main Site
Skip to content

Taut and self-reflective, brutal, belligerent and kind, Patty Chang’s works encompass all the uncomfortable pleasures in being alive.In her video project, Chez Les Grecs (2004), Chang has employed several young Greek men to re-enact her performance Shaved (At a Loss). In Chez Les Grecs, the young men shave their pubic hair with their eyes closed, using only the sensitivity of touch to guide their actions. Shot in bathrooms in Athens, Greece, these site and body specific interpretations bring up notions of perfection and vulnerability, acting and sincerity. With only a set of instructions, the young Greek men translate the performance to give it different meanings through context and culture, and like a foreign language, sometimes it flows but more often it is stunted and awkward. In the video installation, Sorority Stage Fright (2004), Chang has invited college sorority sisters in Los Angeles to remake her performance Stage Fright: I, II & III. In the bathrooms of a sorority house, the sisters eat and vomit fast foods, junk foods and sweets while shooting their own performances with a video camera strapped to their feet and watching Hitchcock’s bland thriller Stage Fright. The obsessive and excessive nature of consumption alternates between boredom and anxiety.

Installation Views

Patty Chang