Amy Chiao is a multimedia artist, performer, designer, and director working in site-specific performance installation, collage, and video. From Cerritos, California, Chiao comes from a family of Cantonese musicians and composers, Opera singers, and mannequin manufacturers. Her work strives to uncover and dimensionalize the fictitious nature of society through dramaturgy, narratology, and speculative design strategies.
She currently resides in Austin, Texas, designing CMF (color/material/finish) stories for industrial robotics while investigating the craft of historical hygiene tools.
She holds a BFA in Textiles at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and an MFA in Scene Design with a concentration in Integrated Media at the California Institute of the Arts (Calarts).
Her practice has been generated through a wide range of production spaces from community media stations, live theater, to product corporations including the cable access TV station Open Signal Portland Community Media, the clown cohort at Coho Theater, and Nike Inc. Her work has been shown at Human Resources (LA), The Elysian Theater, REDCAT Roy & Edna Disney Calarts Theater, the LA State Historic Park, Walt Disney Modular Theater Lobby, Killjoy Collective, Portland Art Museum, and the RISD Museum.