From stamps to shells: Chang Yoong Chia's 20-year career survey at National Art Gallery

Botany Of Desire (gouache on cut dried leaves, installation stitched on cotton cloth, 2012).

There is a quilt that has hundreds of faces of dead people stitched onto it, hung from the ceiling and almost touching the ground. This is Chang Yoong Chia’s Quilt Of The Dead, a work-in-progress that commenced in 2002 and drew from obituary photographs in newspapers.

Inspired by his grandmother’s passing and the circumstances revolving around her death, this personal project soon morphed into performance art, where Chang embroidered these portraits in public as a way to connect with people about the one thing we all have in common with each other: death.