Candy Chang is the Next Speaker in the Mudd Lecture Series Chang, an urban artist and designer, will give a lecture on Feb. 19 at 5 p.m.

By Emily Innes
February 7, 2024

Urban space artist Candy Chang will present a lecture on Feb. 19 at 5 p.m. in Stackhouse Theater in Elrod Commons as part of W&L’s Mudd Center Ethics’ series on the “Ethics of Design.”

Chang’s lecture, which is free and open to the public, is titled “Designing Space for Uncertainty.” A recording of the event will be available for the W&L community.

Chang is a world-renowned artist and urban designer who engages communities to share everything — from their greatest hopes to their deepest anxieties — in public. Through a series of large-scale projects that combine installation art with social activism, Chang’s work aims to uncover the psychological layers within communities. She encourages sharing testimonies of desire, dread, sorrow, hope and courage in public spaces, provoking playful and profound visions of how we can connect, reflect and nurture the health of our communities.

Chang is best known for the “Before I Die” public art project that invites people to reflect on mortality and meaning as a community. The W&L community has the opportunity to add their aspirations to the “Before I Die” wall currently on display on the main floor of Leyburn Library through June 1. W&L’s wall is one of more than 5,000 walls in 78 countries and 35 languages, joining a global conversation about life, death and finding meaning.

“Candy Chang’s body of work is deeply original, creative, and thoughtful,” said Karla Murdock, director of the Mudd Center. “Her projects build a magical space connecting our intrapsychic and social worlds. With a sense of curiosity and playfulness, they invite us to peek at profound aspects of our inner lives and share them with others. The projects are designed as vehicles for feeling our shared humanity.”

A TED Senior Fellow, Urban Innovation Fellow and World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, Chang has created installations for people to share their innermost thoughts around the world, including a confessional sanctuary in a Las Vegas casino, designated sites for “Kissing, Crying, and Freaking Out In Public” in Hong Kong, and a civic tool called “Neighborland” where residents could collaborate on the future of their communities. One of Chang’s recent projects is the participatory installation “A Monument for the Anxious and Hopeful” at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City, where visitors have shared more than 55,000 anxieties and hopes for the future. Chang was named one of the Top 100 Leaders in Public Interest Design by Impact Design Hub and has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Rockefeller Foundation, Black Rock Arts Foundation and Hemera Foundation.

For more information the Ethics of Design series and a complete schedule of events, visit the series webpage.

The Mudd Center was established in 2010 through a gift to the university from award-winning journalist Roger Mudd, a 1950 graduate of W&L. By facilitating collaboration across traditional institutional boundaries, the center aims to encourage a multidisciplinary perspective on ethics informed by both theory and practice. Previous Mudd Center lecture series topics have included Global Ethics in the 21st Century, Race and Justice in America, The Ethics of Citizenship, Markets and Morals, Equality and Difference, The Ethics of Identity, The Ethics of Technology, Daily Ethics and Beneficence.