Patty Chang

Chang’s performance videos are the result of great physical and emotional endurance. Her works can be simultaneously subversive, disturbing, and humorous. In the two-channel video installation In Love, the artist takes on the psychologically fraught familial ties that are singularly important factors in the formation of self-identity. Each screen shows a close-up recording of the artist (from the neck up) directly facing her mother or her father, as they simultaneously eat an onion

with her until it is gone. Because the original video footage runs backward, the opening sequence appears to show the couples kissing and crying, before the onions start to emerge from their mouths. The work speaks to the closeness of parent/child relationships, even through the most difficult experiences, for which eating an onion serves as a metaphor.