Infested Fantasies

Video, Sophia Huang

PROJECT STATEMENT:

Infested Fantasies is a short visualizer created in collaboration with musician Roberto Barragán, based on my sculptural series Infested Fantasies within my collection The Public. This collection explores the emotional extremes of modern dating—anxiety, temptation, rejection, and the pursuit of clarity—in a world that often rewards appearance over authenticity.

The Infested Fantasies sculptures take the form of four melting, distorted televisions, each with a lenticular screen that shifts between two images—one reflecting reality, the other fantasy. This duality mirrors the fragmented nature of situationships, where gestures hint at intimacy but nothing solid forms. The melting forms suggest emotional decay, while the lenticular imagery reveals the instability of perception when desire overshadows truth.

For the visualizer, I translated these sculptures into a surreal narrative of two astronauts navigating a distorted emotional landscape. By pairing sculpture, lenticular visuals, and Barragán’s atmospheric score, the film immerses viewers in a space where fantasy and reality compete for dominance, inviting reflection on the illusions we sustain and the resilience it takes to confront them.

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Sophia Huang is a queer Taiwanese-Chinese American sculptor whose work explores the emotional residues of relationships, cultural inheritance, and identity formation. Rooted in mixed media, her practice often combines clay, resin, and surreal textures to create immersive, narrative-based sculptures that feel both deeply personal and mythically universal. Drawing from her background in design and her lived experience as a queer daughter of immigrants, she uses symbolic rituals and melting forms to critique modern identity, romantic idealization, and spiritual commodification.

Her work challenges viewers to confront the contradictions within transformation: grief and beauty, destruction and rebirth, fantasy and emotional truth. Recent exhibitions include Kouri + Corrao Gallery (Santa Fe), a fundraiser hosted by the nonprofit CLAYDD (Los Angeles), and outdoor art fairs styled as immersive sculptural environments.