melissa q. teng is a new media artist, designer, and researcher based in Boston. Through collaborations or in community, she explores the interdependence of memory and imagination, using care and data as mediums and often in the context of carceral systems. She likes curating art shows and co-led the gallery at EMW Community Space, an activist non-profit that exhibits local, early-career artists of color.
She created Covr, an ongoing participatory design project about prison, reentry and mental health, virtual reality, and collective storytelling. She collaborated with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people to create 360° films depicting high-risk reentry situations from the first-person perspective of a recently released woman. These are designed to be part of a peer-supported reentry program.
Previously she co-taught a partnered design studio course, Participatory Design and Research, at Emerson College and worked as a UX + data visualization designer, creating open data platforms for governments in the Americas. Her visualization work has been featured in the New York Times, the Atlantic’s CityLab, and Flowing Data, with awards from the Webby’s, Kantar’s Information is Beautiful, and Awwwards.
melissa studied Civic Media: Art + Practice at Emerson College in Boston, MA, and Economics at Rice University in Houston, TX. She is currently a Master in City Planning candidate at MIT.