Lang has a layered art practice expressing with paint, sculpture, and installations, creating unique visions with multi-level experiences, taking the audience beneath the surface and beyond the gallery walls.
I work across various media in a concerted effort to articulate how the echoes of war reverberate through both personal memory and collective consciousness. Rooted in my own family’s experience under the military regime in Cambodia, my practice draws on the flickering remnants of the subconscious to engage with the enduring consequences of historical trauma. I am interested in forging connections between specific past events, the ongoing social responsibility of bearing witness in the present, and how this shapes our ethical accountability to future generations. Through form and colour, I hope my visual creations resonate—cultivating a sensory, emotional dialogue and a lasting ripple effect.
My recent work explores alternative modular approaches to conveying concepts and experiences of war—particularly the collective impact of military action and nuclear environmental destruction. I’ve examined these themes through many of my artworks, including The Transfixion of Light and Dark (2018), Unseeing- Still life/ Wallpaper series (2017), Listen (2014–2017), site-specific installation KA BOOM! (2016–2022), and socially engaged artwork POP BANG BOOM (2016 -2023).
BIO:
Lang’s artworks have been awarded the Premier Award for the R.T. Nelson Award for Sculpture (2025), the Judge’s Special Award for Excellence in the Taipei International Award (TIDA, 2021), and highly contested funding Grants and fellowships. She is a finalist in numerous national and international awards, she received public commissions for sculpture and installation works, and invited to participate in renowned international artist residencies, these include Art Omi International Artist Residency in New York (2017), The Studios at MASS MoCA, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (2019), Vermont Studio Center, and Red Gate Residency (Beijing). Her artworks have reached national and international audiences in Australia, the United States, and Europe, and are held in both public and private collections.
I am driven by an innate, compulsive desire to create; my work begins in memory—in fragments of childhood, in the silence between stories, in the weight of what is remembered and what is not. I arrived in Wellington in 1982 as an eight-year-old refugee, after years spent in Thai camps with my family, fleeing the aftermath of the Cambodian war. These experiences live beneath the surface, surfacing through the materials I use—paint, clay, craft-made objects, and space itself.
Through painting, sculpture, and installation, I create emotionally charged work that invites reflection and dialogue. I tell stories shaped by personal history, but they echo far beyond me—into the shared memory of displacement, survival, and resilience.
Mine is a language of feeling, of memory made visible—offering a space where others might see parts of themselves too.