張雨玉 Artist Bio

Art / Music / Culture / Activism Pathway

張雨玉 (tiuⁿ hō gėk) translates to Chang Rain Jade a name given to her by her paternal grandma’s father. 雨玉 and goes by nantronic and is a born again performance artist creating and curating content centering on the Asian Diaspora and its intersections on their Instagram account named nantronic. Born on Election Day in Renton, Washington, USA to Taiwanese immigrants, and is known by her government name Nancy Chang.

Chang grew up a tomboy in rural Skagit Valley, and learned early on to embrace the "Asian Redneck" identity through modeling her confidence after "mediocre white male power" by taking part in youth action sports culture e.g. skateboarding and snowboarding.

Chang graduated with a BFA in Sculpture and Conceptual Art from the University of Washington in 2002, where she trained in casting, metal and wood fabrication, as well as experimenting in soft and edible sculpture.

In the 2000s Chang established themselves as a teaching artist and began an exploration of identity through performance art and immersive installations in Seattle’s fringe art shows. Her early art explored her female Asian-American identity through creating new ritual performances of burning ghost paper money dresses, she entered into both mainstream and Asian beauty pageants, and partook in Seattle's 00's feminist Art Collective: Girlie Fun and showcased her work at ConWorks and Bumbershoot that explored and critiqued consumer culture.

As a child of immigrants, Chang realized quickly that their conceptual art was not commercial, but rather a social critique, pivoted to the idea of “endurance arts and cultural administration performance,” that focused on social justice by subverting the patriarchal male gaze into one of allyship.

Chang entered into community organizing in feminist and youth-driven spaces like the iconic PNW all-ages venue the Old Fire House, established the pioneering action sports non-profit Skate Like a Girl.

By the mid-00s she bought the myth that making art was indulgent, and transitioned her art making towards social activism, and was advised to get her Masters in Public Administration in 2007, where she based her graduation capstone on creating a strategic plan for the grassroots group Skate Like a Girl to become a non-profit. In 2019 she pivoted away from her longest endurance performance of being an arts administrator to re-center on herself as an artist. She is focused on the journey of decolonizing, healing and sharing her process of #BecomingGuanyin and #AsianRedneck via IG.