Lang Ea

Cambodian-born and Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland-based, Lang Ea has developed a distinctive practice spanning sculpture, installation and painting. Drawing upon personal histories of migration and displacement alongside broader social and political narratives, her work explores memory, conflict, belonging and human resilience. Across her practice, deeply personal experiences become a means of considering larger questions around collective memory, social responsibility and the ways histories continue to reverberate through the present.

Ea’s sculptural language is characterised by an elegant balance between material precision and emotional complexity. Highly polished stainless steel, reflective surfaces and fluid, often deceptively simple forms create works that respond continually to their surroundings. 

Ea’s wider practice has reached audiences throughout Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, Europe and the United States. She has participated in major international artist residencies including Art Omi International Artists Residency in New York and The Studios at MASS MoCA in Massachusetts, alongside residencies at Vermont Studio Center and the Red Gate Residency in Beijing. Her work encompasses gallery exhibitions, site-specific installations, socially engaged projects and significant public sculpture.

Among major public works is Beacon (2020), a 2.5-metre polished stainless-steel sculpture commissioned for Milford Reserve in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Inspired by the history of women’s suffrage in Aotearoa, the work reflects upon the achievements of the suffrage movement while considering the pathways created for subsequent generations of women. In 2025, her stainless-steel sculpture Negotiation was awarded the Premier Award at the R.T. Nelson Awards for Sculpture.

Recent exhibitions include ABSTRAXT ABSTRAXT, NorthArt Gallery, Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau (2024), POP! BANG! BOOM!, NZ Sculpture OnShore (2023), Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau, NZ 2022, ‘POP! BANG! BOOM! Little Pom Poms always turn into the mother of all POM’ – social sculpture (ongoing), locations include Kaipara Coast Sculpture Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau, KA BOOM!, Torrione San Giorgio - Gradisca d’Isonzo, Italy (2022), Sculpture on the gulf (2022), Waiheke island, Brick Bay Sculpture trail (2021), Fresh, INSELGALERIE Berlin; Galleri Heike Arndt DK; Berlin, Germany (2021), Darkest Before Dawn: Art in a Time of Uncertainty, Ethan Cohen Gallery, KuBe, Beacon, New York (2020).