PITTSBURGH, PA.- Mattress Factory is presenting The Hidden Shift, by Ting Tong Chang.
When Taipei-based artist Ting Tong Chang explored Pittsburgh in 2024, he learned of the role the region played in the history of organized labor. He was struck by the 1892 Homestead Strike — a violent confrontation between workers and Henry Clay Frick’s Pinkerton agents – and the power imbalances it highlighted. Drawing inspiration from these events, as well as from the Mattress Factory’s layered history of industrial and cultural production, Chang worked alongside local filmmakers Alex Abrahams and Benny Shaffer to create a story that would weave these threads together. The result is a murder mystery set in a fictional macaroni factory.
The film noir–inspired work began as a three-act play. Here it becomes juxtaposed with a documentary style “making of” film. This cinematic device is further complicated by the casting of museum staff as actors, offering a behind-the-scenes look into the creative process and an intimate portrait of daily museum life.
Paired with support from various local and international institutions, The Hidden Shift has emerged as Mattress Factory’s most collaborative project in a decade.
"What moved me most about this project was how naturally collaboration emerged as its driving force,” said Mattress Factory Executive Director David Oresick. “Ting, Alex, Benny, and our staff built this work together; not as a museum commissioning a film, but as a community shaping an artwork.”
The Hidden Shift is a twisting metanarrative that dissolves the boundaries between art and labor, performance and production. Through its mirrored structure, story, and experiential set, the exhibition invites viewers to grapple with questions surrounding capitalism, the meaning of work, and the precarity of the so-called “creative class.”
Ting Tong Chang (b.1982, Taipei) is an artist who lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan and Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
After receiving his MFA at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2011, Chang has exhibited internationally. He held solo exhibitions at the Museum of NTUE and Taipei Fine Arts Museum and has participated in group shows and commissioned projects in Anyang Public Art Project(KR), Guangzhou Triennial(CN), Taipei Biennia(TW)l, Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media(JP), Compton Verney Art Gallery(UK) and Wellcome Trust(UK). Chang’s major awards include the Taishin Arts Award(TW), Taipei Art Award(TW), Art Central RISE Award(HK), VIA Arts Prize(UK), Gilbert Bayes Award(UK) and Lumen Prize(UK). His works can be found in the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Art Bank, Hong Foundation, Aura Contemporary Art Foundation and private collections in Europe and Asia.
Chang was selected for exhibition by a panel of Mattress Factory alumni artists through the 2024 International Open Call. Artists who have worked in residency with Mattress Factory offer perspective unlike any other, one that is deeply familiar with the museum, engaged in many aspects of the contemporary art field, and invested in pushing our exhibitions in new directions.
