Drawing from her background in anthropology, Maia Chao often approaches art with an observation, then a question: Where *does *the art in doctors’ offices come from? How *do* you make a living as an artist? Building on these inquiries, often through mimicry or replication, leads to works that can make the mundane feel absurd, beautiful, or troubling.

So it was with filler words. In the 2016 audio work *Hesitation Particles*,Chao interviewed native speakers of 31 different languages to collect samples of “hesitation particles”––used in most languages to mark a pause or hesitation in speech, as with “um” in English. Chao’s resulting composition is atmospheric—like being immersed in a crowd of global strangers deep in thought. Another project, “A Picture of Health (2022),” began with the weird art in a doctor’s office.…