Photo of Kristiana 莊礼恩 Chan
Future Artifacts, 2023-ongoing
Kristiana 莊礼恩 Chan (she/they) is a first generation Chinese Malaysian artist, writer, and educator from the American South living in California. Her work examines the material memory of the landscape and the excluded histories of the Asian American diaspora. She researches the political, historical, and environmental heritage of the landscape and its material elements and organisms incorporating their properties into her processes. She is interested in the relationships between themes of migration, labor, trade, and reciprocity with the natural world, challenging ideals of extractive capitalism and grounding her objects in material tactility.
Previous projects have focused on the lost stories of early Chinese diaspora settlers in California, and their connections to early industries like fishing and mining. These stories, images, and references entangle the historical and mythological, while the gathered materials attempt to transcend gaps in the written record. Kristiana is interested in themes of science and speculative fiction, and the littoral coastal zones, gleaning ancient wisdom from environments that have adapted to rapidly changing conditions.
She is a recipient of the Rydell Visual Arts Fellowship and has been a resident at Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Tides Institute, and Stelo Arts. She has shown at the Asian Art Museum, Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, University of San Francisco, Stelo Arts, SOMArts, Vessel Gallery, Kearny Street Workshop, and the David Brower Center. She is a Teaching Artist Mentor with the Performing Arts Workshop, a graduate of the New York Foundation of Arts Immigrant Artist program, and has curated with Kearny Street Workshop and the California Institute for Integral Studies. She is a current MFA candidate at UC Berkeley.