Ling Tan is an award-winning artist, designer and creative technologist whose work explores how people can collectively reshape the urban systems and structures they inhabit, using culture, participation and technology as catalysts for dialogue and action. Trained as an architect, her practice spans permanent public art, large-scale participatory projects, interactive installations and events, with a persistent focus on citizen participation and collective agency. Her work addresses pressing urban issues including climate change, public safety, air quality, and gender and racial equity.
Her recent projects include Low Carbon Chinatown, an environmental art initiative blending art, science and technology that uses food culture as an entry point into the broader systemic challenges of the climate crisis, engaging cross-generational East and Southeast Asian communities alongside scientists, policymakers, food writers, chefs and growers. In its latest iteration, an experiential installation, Harvesting Climate Action, deconstructed into a live banquet for 100 people gathered to eat, debate and collectively map pathways for climate action. Wild Imaginarium, created with HAQUE TAN, is a permanent architectural intervention at Great Ormond Street Hospital developed through collaboration with hospital students that redistributes architectural authorship by embedding students’ AI-mediated creations into the fabric of the building. Playing Democracy 2.0, originally commissioned by the Barbican and Lumen Art Projects, is a giant multiplayer game of Pong in which players rewrite the rules of democracy in real time; it won the STRP ACT Award 2024 and has been exhibited at Ars Electronica, STRP Festival and Cinekid.
Ling’s expertise spans multiple disciplines, from architecture and design to data science and environmental policy. She co-founded HAQUE TAN, a design studio combining the scale of architecture with the ingenuity of art and the eccentricities of technology, to make spaces more democratic, inclusive and culturally-driven, and is Creative Director at urban technology studio Umbrellium. She is a UK Design Council Expert and a frequent public speaker helping shape discourse on diversity, participation, urban technology and citizen empowerment. As an artist and curator, she was previously Associate Artistic Director at Kakilang, where she produced work and curated the critically acclaimed exhibition State-less. Her work has been exhibited internationally at Centre Pompidou (FR), V&A, Barbican, Science Gallery, Somerset House, Manchester Museum (UK), STRP Festival (NL), Ars Electronica (AUT), HeK (CH), Liljevalchs (SE), Zebrastraat (BE), Zollverein (DE), Fukuoka City Science Museum (JP) and Wits Art Museum (SA), and featured in Dezeen, Wired and Fast Company.
