Organized by the Queens Museum, New York, The Wandering Lake, 2009-2017 is Chang’s most ambitious work to date: an eight-year project that redefines the role of artist, image, object and performance in the construction of narratives through an exhibition that integrates video projection, photography, sculpture, publication, and performance as one expansive body of work. The exhibition allows viewers to navigate through Chang’s personal, associative, and narrative meditation on mourning, caregiving, geopolitics, and landscape. The exhibition has been structured to replicate the complex way in which stories develop through geography, history, cultural mythology, fiction, and personal experience. While Chang’s multi-year project was in part inspired by turn-of-the-century colonial explorer Sven Hedin’s book The Wandering Lake (1938)—which tells the story of a migrating body of water in the Chinese desert—the project also chronicles the loss of Chang’s father as well as her pregnancy and the birth of her son.

The Wandering Lake, 2009-2017 is on view through August 4 at Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles 1717 E 7th St, Los Angeles, CA 90021. photographs courtesy of Elon Schoenholz/ICA LA