Jenny “Jeta” Tang is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and engineer based in Hawaiʻi.

Since childhood, Jeta has been plagued by an existential question: What does it all mean?

That question has followed her through multiple lives, from software engineer to artist to writer, and continues to guide the way she navigates the world. Her practice grows from that impulse: to search for meaning within contradictions and the strange business of being human.

Her work dances between sculpture, installation, performance and creative technology.

Through performance, Jeta explores the body as sculpture, using the female form as material for narrative, critique, and, most profoundly, reclamation.

In her sculptural practice, she is drawn to discarded materials and overlooked objects, reimagining what has been abandoned into new experiences.

For Jeta, sustainability is both a material practice and a response to the climate crisis. Art can be deeply wasteful, yet humanity cannot live without it. Her work grapples with that conundrum, exploring how artists might continue creating while contributing to restoration rather than further extraction.

As the arts columnist for Honolulu Civil Beat, Jeta brings her search for meaning into writing, examining Hawaiʻi’s creative communities through a civic lens and uncovering the larger systems that influence art, culture, and public life.

(Photo by Ivan Wentland)