Candy Chang’s “Before I Die”: A psychological study

(Illustration by: Emma Fick)

Here in New Orleans we do death differently. We don’t mourn; we celebrate. We don’t cry; we second line. I know it might sound crazy, but it’s our culture. It’s how we’ve always done things. Death shouldn’t be an end to the life but a celebration of the life that once was. That’s how we handle it, and artist Candy Chang seems to get that through the interactive art that asks “What do you want to do before you die?”

She connects people to death and life through her art. Take for instance her piece entitled “I Wish This Was.” It was created in 2010 because Chang was frustrated that the Marigny neighborhood didn’t have a supermarket. Chang distributed boxes of stickers for free in bookstores, coffee shops, bars and at Du Mois Gallery on Freret Street. The sample sticker she had read “I Wish This Was A Grocery!” She told the people she passed the stickers out to, to place them on abandoned buildings and wherever else they felt the need to. She understands the importance of getting thoughts and ideas spread through art and word-of-mouth, which is as about New Orleans as you can get, and that is what brings me to her piece about death.

Her piece called “Before I Die” was painted on the side of an abandoned house. It was created in 2011 after she grieved the death of someone she loved for a long period of time. Chang installed the wall so that people could share their personal hopes and ambitions.

“Before I Die,” is meant to let the living reflect on life and death without anyone ever knowing who is doing the reflecting. It allows you to take in others reflections as well as write your own. Chang asks us to engage with both life and art through this interactive piece while we are also contemplating how to live life, knowing that we will one day die. There isn’t a sadness about death with this piece, there is an inevitability of death, and that even extends to the artwork itself.

“Before I Die” had a death of its own, being taken down two months after it was installed. The owner of the abandoned house made the house a home and no longer wanted Chang’s piece on the outside. However, people around the world saw it and wanted it to be apart of their communities. The piece became a global thing. Instead of destroying the piece in New Orleans, it was moved to the Ogden Museum of Southern Art where it remained. But only for a while.

Because as we know in New Orleans — as we think about our city moving closer and closer to being underwater and hearing of the tragedies that plague our streets every day and night — all good things do really come to an end.