Ali Pang

Ali Pang is a Chinese-New Zealand multimedia artist and jeweller who grew up in Paraparaumu and is based in Pōneke Wellington. From 2009 to 2011, she attended AUT and completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts.

Pang has been fluid with her creative practice, often taking up new forms. She has been making zines since 2018 and regularly attends Zine Fest in Te Whanganui-a-Tara and Tāmaki Makaurau. Pang’s self-deprecating zines cover many topics, including butts, cats, The Office, and personal reminders, but the throughline in dealing with each of these subjects is her pastel colour palette, repetitive pattern-based design, and playful sense of humour.

In addition to her extensive zinemaking practice, Pang creates illustrated prints and collages that manipulate and play with landscapes and vibrant colours incorporating flowers, fungi, and animals. Like her zines, the illustrations that she creates are often pastel in colour and include cigarettes, detailed drawings of hands, characters with more than two eyes, and more butts. She showcases her work on her Instagram page and sells them through her website.

In 2020, Pang started her own jewellery business, Pang Jewellery. This grew out of attending night classes in jewellery-making some years earlier. In her interview on the Asian in Aotearoa podcast, Pang said that she makes jewellery that she would like to wear and hasn’t seen available elsewhere. Part of her aim is to minimise waste by recycling any filings and metal off-cuts into more pieces of jewellery and reusing used packaging to ship each piece. Each piece is designed by Pang and made to order, and all social media, website and promotion is done by Pang herself. The designs, words and patterns she incorporates in her jewellery are reflective of her aesthetic interests in her broader practice: repetitive lines, bubbly forms, floral pieces and, of course, a necklace with the word “BUTTS”.

Ali Pang’s art website

Pang Jewellery website

Ali Pang’s interview on Asian in Aotearoa podcast

2023 — ARTISTS ON ARTISTS, TwentySix Gallery, Pōneke

2023 — ARTISTS ON ARTISTS, Wairarapa Museum of Art and History, Wairarapa

2018 — Bossy, Black Coffee, Pōneke

2015 — Illustration, Matchbox Studios, Pōneke

2015 — Typography, Matchbox Studios, Pōneke

2015 — Tiny Travelling Gallery, hosted by several galleries throughout Tāmaki Makaurau and Ōtautahi

2015 — Aquatic, Matchbox Studios, Pōneke

2015 — Repeat repeat repeat, Matchbox Studios, Pōneke

2015 — Dirty Laundry, First Thursday, Ōtautahi

2014 — Animals, Matchbox Studios, Pōneke

2014 — Gift It, In Good Company, Pōneke

2014 — Creatures, Matchbox Studios, Pōneke

2013 — Things getting really weird quickly, Matchbox Studios, Pōneke

2013 — Illustrate, Matchbox Studios, Pōneke

2012 — Faded Consciousness, Matchbox Studios, Pōneke