Kayla Tange

Kayla Tange is a Los Angeles-based artist born in South Korea and adopted by a Japanese American family. Psychic boundaries, desire, and permanence are recurring themes in her work. She is part of diaspora collectives Han Diaspora Group, Hwa Records, and Chosun Family, as well as sex worker-run shows Cyber Clown Girls and Stripper Co-op, which focus on fundraising, mutual aid, and community building through performance. Tange is also known under the stage name Coco Ono where she expresses emotional and societal confines – often in dark humor. Coupling her experiences while recalibrating her own narrative, the work is created to facilitate meaningful dialogue around death, mutation, and our need for belonging and compensation for emotional and physical labor. She has performed or exhibited at Human Resources, Highways Performance Space, REDCAT, Torrance Art Museum, Performance Studies International, Melbourne, OUTFEST, Asian Pacific Film Festival, Wexner Center for the Arts, and Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco. She holds a BA from the University of California Los Angeles with a major in Art and a minor in Gender Studies.

Neon Ruins (2022)

I was dreaming of Koreas mountainous landscapes and how even before I traveled back there to visit my country of origin my body already knew that’s where it felt at ease. I was dreaming of feeling whole again enveloped by neon sunsets where longing was a past memory.

Envisioned Futures (2021)

I was sitting with one of the prompts around neutral tones and wanted to recycle materials I had. I happened to find a variety of scrap leather pieces in exactly that color palette and while I was creating the square, I was really thinking about community and movement within different communities. I figured the best way for me to communicated this was through the placement of various circles.