Melissa Teng

Melissa Teng is a social practice and multimedia artist whose works examine systems of control and the freedoms within, often as acts of collective imagination and care. Her work is frequently in collaboration with community and responds to issues of hypervisibility and invisibility. Her interdisciplinary practice is rooted in storytelling, ranging from interactive media to public art.

Currently, she is a graduate student in the Data + Feminism Lab in the Dept. of Urban Studies + Planning at MIT. She is part of the inaugural Collective Futures Fund cohort through The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Tufts University Art Galleries. Her research about design, technology, and community engagement has been published in New Media & Society, the proceedings of Human Factors in Computing Systems (ACM SIGCHI), and the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction. She has professional experience working as a UX & data visualization designer, and her teams’ work has been recognized by the Webby’s, Kantar’s Information Is Beautiful, Awwwards, FastCompany’s World Changing Ideas, the New York Times, and others.

Melissa Teng
Osmanthus Alley
Digital Video

“I remember the sweet waft of osmanthus blossoms in the night air, occasionally mingling with aromatic chili oil from the street vendors. The gravel under our feet followed two rhythms: the steady beat of walking and the grind of a worn-in wheelchair. The funny thing is I don’t remember if these are my memories or someone else’s story I have repainted. As a child of diaspora, I know that memories are travelers like nothing else: leaping oceans, decades, and even bodies that are not mine. Like many wanderers, they resist containment and definition. These pieces explore memory through two archival mediums: video and water.

Osmanthus 桂花 explores how we approximate intimacy with camera technologies like videos and monitors. In my last visit to see my grandparents, I tried to document every moment, not wanting to miss something important. In this anxiety, I can understand the desire to surveil as a perverse but common form of care. That is, it is a form of care that anxiously forgets how to be present for another.

Melissa Teng
Paradise I (Flooding)
Digital video

Paradise I is a performance created in my room during the second wave of COVID-19 lockdowns in the U.S. and after the shooting spree in three spas around Atlanta, GA, on March 16, 2021. Toni Morrison wrote: “All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.” In washing a pair of house slippers from a porcelain bowl, Paradise I meditates on the labor that immigrants perform to maintain their objects of everyday life and, by extension, their memories of being.” — Melissa Teng