Chia Amisola is an artist of ambiences. Their practice explores the internet's loss, love, labor, and liberation from spaces domestic to divine. Composing agencies & atmospheres, they attend to the intimacies of infrastructures & the labor of tools.
Composing agencies, their work takes form as (web)site-specific art: performances, games, tools, sound, and installations. They work from sound & field recording, durational art & performance, rigorous programming & scraping... contemplating atmospheres and the faith, memory, power, and bodies that emerge.
Chia founded & stewards Developh (founded 2016), a community of practice towards an archipelagic internet, most recently curating & programming KAKAKOMPYUTER MO YAN! (That's what you get for using the computer!), an independent exhibition of third world net art.
Chia's work has been presented internationally at Art Fair Philippines, Manila; the V&A and Somerset House, London; InterAccess, Toronto; Tai Kwun, Hong Kong; WSA, New York; panke.gallery, Berlin; Gray Area, San Francisco; and the Experimental Games Showcase at GDC. Features include The New Yorker, BOMB Magazine, Frieze, It’s Nice That, Nylon, et. al, and recognition as Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia and as a Lumen Prize Winner.
They're a Product Designer at Figma designing creative tooling. They are based between San Francisco & Manila.
...For technologists
Chia Amisola is a designer, developer, researcher, and artist.
They currently design systems for interactivity at Figma; and practice as an artist (installations, performance, games, websites) whose work has been internationally exhibited.
They're interested in the poetics of machines, the labor of tools, and the intimacies of infrastructures: artistic applications and explorations of the internet/browser as medium, and of agents & alternative intelligences and ecosystems.
Previously, they designed/wrote code at Spotify (Design Systems), Kumu (#1 app in the Philippines), Rappler, and other small startups. They studied Computer Science and Art at Yale University.
Contact
chiamisola@gmail.comAre.na, Instagram, Twitter, Bluesky
Vimeo, Youtube
Wikipedia, LinkedIn
Location
San Francisco, CA & Manila, Philippines
Work
2022—Present, Product Designer, FigmaEducation
2022, BA Computing & the Arts, YaleSelected Exhibitions
Kakakompyuter Mo Yan!, Art Fair Philippines, ManilaRoot Access (Duo with Yoshi Sodeoka), MoMAR, New York
Code.Xcess, Tai Kwun, Hong Kong
Screening, V&A Museum, UK
DEMO Festival, New Museum x NEWINC, New York
Selected Talks & Performances
On Himala, Internet Archive, San FranciscoHimala, CultureHub, New York
Artists talk, Gray Area, San Francisco
On apocalypses & archipelagos, UX+, Manil
Performance, Gray Area, San Francisco
KAKAKOMPYUTER MO YAN, NEW INC, New York
Screen Walk, Fotomuseum Winterthur & Photographers' Gallery London
Internet ambient, 98B Collab, Manila
If you knew me..., panke.gallery, Berlin
Domain naming, Naive Yearly, Copenhagen
Selected Press
BOMB Magazine (Interview)The New Yorker
WeTransfer
It’s Nice That
Escape the Algorithm (Interview)
Usurpator (Interview)
Frieze
El País
Nylon
Esquire
Awards & Residencies
Moving Image Award, Lumen PrizeResident, CultureHub NY
30 Under 30 Asia, Forbes
Y10 Art & Code, NEW INC, Rhizome & New Museum
Media Arts Residency, Kala Art Institute
Microgrant for net.art, Rhizome
Cultural Incubator, Gray Area
Fellow, DWeb Camp, Internet Archive
Sudler Prize for Creative Arts, Yale University
