Chao’s (she/her) work in performance, video, sculpture, and social practice investigates systems of value and power within formal and informal institutions such as museums, economic structures, and families. Often playful and humorous, her projects invite collaborations with the public and reveal opportunities for cultural institutions to become more communal spaces. Her multi-year social practice project Look at Art. Get Paid., created in collaboration with artist Josephine Devanbu, invited people who don’t usually visit art museums to act as paid guest critics at the RISD Museum in Rhode Island. The guest critics’ feedback directly influenced the museum’s approaches to collection acquisition, signage, and more. Chao’s work has been exhibited at The Shed, Tufts University Art Galleries, Brown University Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, and Parsons School of Design’s Kellen Gallery. She is a member of the Philadelphia art collective Vox Populi and a professor of social practice at Maryland Institute College of Design in Baltimore. A Fulbright grantee, she earned an MFA in glass from Rhode Island School of Design and a BA in cultural anthropology from Brown University.
