Mia Dang

Mia is sculpting a catalyst for thoughts and public thinking

For this residency, I’m making a sculpture: an ice block. Inside this I’ll add a hand sewn pearl chain. My prototype had chains, 20 meters long, immersed in a mold with water, which was then frozen. I named this project “Last Dance”. As you approach death the memories of your life pass through you like a carousel. The ice sculpture melting is a lifetime compressed into one last duration. It will take about two days to melt, during which it will continuously reform. I draw inspiration from the brevity of life, but while working on my prototype I had the chains rise like mountains, resembling a plume of smoke suspended in the air. A vision about trauma of war, injury, occurred. Smoke doesn’t go away that fast – it lingers and stays inside your lungs. You carry it with you throughout your life.

One time I viewed a work by Koen Kievits at a Copenhagen gallery. He works with sand; there was a performance where it flowed out of the artwork like an hourglass. During that time (2-3 minutes) the sand went from a horizontal line to different landscapes, mountains and dreams. I saw so much in a couple of minutes. The piece inspired me to think about how a sculpture can interact with its surroundings, as a catalyst for thoughts, public thinking. Sculptures used to be so monumental and static, now they can be engaging and performative as well. I wish to explore and expand upon that, maybe I can trigger visions and arouse emotions.

Humans are drawn to confusion; they circle parts of the mind to solve it. That’s what I enjoy too: the spiralling. When you solve the mystery, you also improve and train the brain to think so vividly. Art can provoke your personal possessions in a not-so literal or explicit way. You can engage in more thinking, ideas, and participation from the audience with a provocative subject. But don’t make it too niche, distant or specific. Art is still treated like a privilege bubble sometimes – it can manifest as paintings, sculptures, and visuals but also as everyday labour, dream, conversation. Are you willing to dig deep & bring what you see to discussion?

In art school, the curriculum is reviewed and selected. It should not only be expanded, but we should also explore new art as well. Focusing on the past doesn’t initiate much significance. We shouldn’t be content with established norms. The media touches upon some supposedly “significant” problems, not all of them. They censor and silence tons of things. I don’t see art or other socially engaged activities getting the power that they should obtain. Both count on the changes you make because you want to, not because people tell you to.

Just one project cannot incorporate every one of my ideas about art. My artistic practice is the story of a journey. Not a life-long journey but a long one, a body of work building up to something. I want to work on the fragments and see how they come together in the end.