Amulets

In her newest body of work, Julie W. Chang wields a dictionary of talismans to investigate and celebrate the power of cultural symbols to shape and transform our lives.

In the wake of the 2020 pandemic, Chang began reconsidering how traditional amulets operate as protective energies as well as binding or guiding forces. Her deftly intricate paintings weave together fetishes from a wide range of cultures and eras, in a series of layers that form a three-dimensional matrix. Layered and interwoven in this way, these symbols of healing, wisdom, redemption, joy, enlightenment, interdependence, and peace combine to form a powerful global emblem of hope and renewal.

Chang has long been interested in the implied meanings and identifying markers inherent to the historical development of patterns in textiles and decorative objects. Chang manipulates this tradition of abstract patterning through collisions of familiar forms, like the Chinese symbol for happiness, the Sanskrit character for namaste, the peace sign, or the lucky cricket. Through layering and repetition, these symbols morph, migrate, and cross boundaries, transformed by encounters with other forms. Arrivals, foreignness, dislocation, struggle, and integration are some of the references implied in these confrontations.

This exhibition will also debut Chang’s first free-standing sculptures, in which the amulets and symbols are stacked and interlocked as building blocks. These forms arise vertically or expand outward in a cooperative gesture of interdependence, giving physical shape to the metaphor of peace as an act of co-creation.