Loosely Assembled Order

Artworks by Grace Wang

I CREATE PRIVATE INSTALLATIONS—works not meant for public display, but intimate, exploratory spaces for me that help strengthen my self-agency.

AT THE SAME TIME, I design computer systems that do the same for everyone: tools that encourage reflection, expression, and autonomy through creative interaction.

ART AND RESEARCH are not separate parts of my life. They are two expressions of the same question →→→→→→→→→→

MY ART BEGINS IN THE PERSONAL. When my partner moved into my apartment—for them, an unfamiliar yet intimate living space—I created a color-coded system to mark their comfort with each part of the room. Not for anyone to see but a way for us to understand and communicate a complex emotional landscape. Moments like this form the core of my practice.

“ How can we design creative experiences that nurture our ability to act with intention, reflect with clarity, and live with agency? ”

Color-Coding Move-In, 2025

Sometimes, the process is quiet and tender. When I feel overwhelmed, I draw images like “holding my own heart as it slows in my hands.”

At first, the emotion is raw. But through making, I negotiate with my emotions. The act of making gives the feeling space to evolve. By the time I finish, I can look at it with distance and clarity, as if the emotion now lives safely inside the artwork.

I keep an ice mold of my old apartment keys. Each one carries how I clung to temporary homes for a sense of belonging in a foreign country—fragile, melting, impossible to hold, yet vital to a sense of home.

Life - Heart on T-shirt, 2024

Putting on Contact Lenses, 2021

Ice Mold and Key for Apt No.2, 2025

Sometimes the work faces outwards to understand the world—here’s comparative advantage in international trade represented as a jigsaw puzzle.

Each piece helps me act with more INTENTIONALITY, engage in deeper REFLECTION, claim my AUTONOMY, and strengthen my SELF-EFFICACY. These four elements—the components of the psychological theories of self-agency—shape the arc of my creative life.

I was fortunate to develop this practice in Northwestern’s ART, THEORY, AND PRACTICE department, where I studied with Lane Relyea, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Michael Rakowitz, and Deb Sokolow, whose teaching encouraged and transformed my creative vocabulary.

I’m proud to have been one of 11 ATP majors in my cohort—a space where we felt safe to take risks, fail spectacularly, and pull of absurd gestures, like abducting borrowing a tree from the university as a satire on postcolonial land recognition statements.

With my 11 ATP peers, we planned and built an exhibition entirely from scratch.

Is this still a sculpture? Yes it is!

The Tree in Question (A Postcolonial Statement)

The proudest creation I’ve ever made is this beautiful wall we built together in just two days in the exhibition hall.

But the core of my practice is that I don’t believe this process —creative interaction as a way of strengthening self-agency—is special to artists. I believe creativity is a mindset and a practice anyone can adopt—not a matter of talent or materials, but a way of making sense of the world.

Is that true? How? I’m try to answer these questions in the years to come.