Meet Amy Chiao | Performance Installation Artist & Color Materials Designer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Amy Chiao and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Amy, what’s one piece of conventional advice that you disagree with?

Law 40: “Despise the free lunch” from The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene or “there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch”

Free food is a universally seductive offering to draw in an audience. Last memorable one I attended was a free dinner at Romano’s Macaroni Grill serving “WHAT WOMEN NEED TO KNOW TO HELP MAXIMIZE THEIR RETIREMENT INCOME.” I went with my mother in February. The combination of American suburbia caesar salads, reheated one meatball spaghettis, and savvy social security planning for women (single, widowed, divorced, twice divorced) was a surprisingly educational and inspirational palette for my senses. Bonus points was witnessing all the plus one husbands getting seated at the table.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?

I grew up drawing as my main medium. It was the best way to quiet my mind at the time. However I never truly figured out how to express my emotions and ideas through rendering. I was under the impression that realism was the end goal. I then discovered the embodied, meditative craft of textiles at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where my interests in materiality and spectacle intertwined through costume and soft sculpture. I made life long friends weaving all-nighters at our looms.

After graduating from RISD, I worked at Nike as materials designer for kids footwear and celebrity baby booties. There, I gained substantial experience on material storytelling, product narratology, and the art of presentations. Much of my current practice draws on skills I developed at Nike. Living in Portland, I also happened upon two gems, a cable access TV station Open Signal formerly known as Portland Community Media and Coho Theater’s clown cohort led by the influential Philip Cuomo of Coho Productions. I was an active member in these groups where I began to produce, direct, and edit videos, design costumes and props, and fabricate large-scale puppets with my close textile artist friend and collaborator, Chloe Cooper.

In 2018, I moved back to Los Angeles to produce and design my father’s musical based on our family’s mannequin business and his dream of becoming a professional tenor “Mannequin Man by Day, Tenor by Night.” Soon after, I began my graduate studies in Scene Design at CalArts, where I found my truest self arriving at a full circle, analyzing theatrical spatial design forms through a dramaturgical lens, much like I did unknowingly as a kid seated at Lazy Susan dining tables watching my father sing “O Sole Mio” night after night.

Today, I’m still balancing the different worlds of my creative self as a color and materials designer alongside my performance installation art projects. Nowadays, I am embracing how my mind naturally works. I can set it free to go wild, ask it more questions, and when it starts to feel chaotic again, I always have a toolbox of making with my hands to quiet it down.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I highly recommend anyone to check out the programming at the Philosophical Research Society (PRS). I came across Manly P Hall’s work while conversing with the AI chatbot Unity GPT. https://unitygpt.org/ I’m especially a fan of the Butoh workshops at PRS taught by Josie J. Los Angeles has plethora of somatic based practitioners and resources in theater and dance, many of which are highly accessible to beginners, that keep me grounded here.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?

There are so many talented, caring humans who have helped support, mentor, inspire, and collaborate with me along the way! One of the most gratifying aspects of being apart of an artistic community is getting to know one another deeply through the process of self-discovery, vulnerable critique, and collaboration. Two big shout outs to Natalie Ferguson and Danny Baxter, fellow artists and set designer friends I met at CalArts, who have been indispensable, generous creative forces in my last few years of performance making.

I cannot express enough gratitude to my family for building a nurturing life in America as immigrants. Growing up in a household of mannequin business owners, Cantonese composers, and Cultural Revolutionist performing artists, I’ve been fascinated by the power of live performance storytelling since a young age from Chinese American talent shows at restaurants to international retail display trade fairs. My work is an extension of my family and their memories.

Website: https://www.amychiao.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amyeatfries/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amychiao/

Youtube: https://vimeo.com/amychiao

Other: https://www.behance.net/amychiao

Image Credits