Alaya Ang

I am an interdisciplinary artist based in Glasgow, Scotland.

My processes prioritise modes of exchange and the transfer of artistic agency, using sculpture, sound, performance to investigate notions of community, informed by cross-cultural ties, as well as transnational movements.

My practice is informed by my Southeast Asian heritage influenced by Chinese, Indian, Malay cultures and also the complex legacies and cultural syncretism due to European colonialism in the region.

Focusing on material memory, I create installations that allow for processes of participative archiving to uncover matrilineal and genderqueer narratives and genealogies.

Maritime trade is an important aspect in my practice, looking at the close links between labour, migration and colonialism and how I form a material link to this history through my processes. This can be understood through consideration of my current artistic project ‘The Sea, The Rope, the Heat, and The Fingers Pulling the Thread’. This is a project imagined in cumulative forms that spans across sculpture, sound, performance and writing and community involvement.

Focusing on material memory, I create installations that allow for processes of participative archiving to uncover matrilineal and genderqueer narratives and genealogies.

I am currently working on experimenting with textiles and mud-dyeing techniques to reflect on layers of industry, environmental changes and degradation. Two sites in Scotland are the River Esk where water has turned rust/ orange due to untreated sewage and iron ore deposits from old mine workings entering the water, and from the Shale Bings at West Lothian, with heaps of waste remnants from shale mining.