AN ESCAPE FROM REALITY, A MUSEUM OF EMOTION
Keyword: POSITIVE
CHEN: ""I consider art-making as a positive form of escape, allowing me to process and digest difficult..."
Keyword: PERSPECTIVES
CHEN: "...where there was 'nowhere to walk' in the created space, to a series where 'there are clear ways...'"
Keyword: HESITATION
HO: "I feel that she is more or less worried about what she chooses to do. She grasps this worry and..."
“I consider art-making as a positive form of escape, allowing me to process and digest difficult emotions. As a forgetful person, recording my thoughts and emotions on paper is a way for me to confront them and gradually let go of negative feelings. However, there are times when I simply record my feelings without intending to let go of them.” Her artwork serves as a form of “self-healing.” It functions like a diary as it records various relationships and emotions. In her words, she calls the world on paper as her "Peach Blossom Spring,” a place to escape from the burdens of reality. Alternatively, she calls it the “air-raid shelter” if using the modern language. In other words, when life becomes overwhelming, she turns to art as a space for spiritual escape, creating ink paintings that depict the depths of her soul. At the core of her artwork lies the theme of “relationship." She mentioned how interacting with others have been causing her anxiety, “If it is a personal thing, then I can give up easily as long as I am not feeling comfortable. However, if any other people are involved in the situation, which it would add to others burden when I give up, then this is not something I can run away from. I get unease with that situations.” Despite this, not all of her artwork depicts the negative emotions; some of them are things she cherish. For instance, Incubation, one of the artwork core to our discussion, focuses on the portrayal of nurturing the next generations, that is not negative at all.
In terms of the art form, Chen makes ink paintings, which she chose due to her inclination towards drawing on paper and the softness of ink. In addition, her art can be classified into two major series. The first series, "Plant," portrays objects that Chen loves and cherishes, such as plants that she talks to when she has no one else to talk to. This series sometimes serves as a precursor to the second series, which is more experimental and allows for the development of character images. Chen developed this series naturally during her undergraduate study in fine arts, where fundamental education in ink painting influenced her to build it up.
The second series, "Space," is a mechanical and artificial geometric world co-constructed with live images to create various symbolic representations. Each work is a room, a collection of life with interconnected elements, and the aggregated composition can be called an "illustrated book." This series developed from Chen's struggle to understand the "sense of space" in ink painting, which was influenced by the video game Monument Valley. Monument Valley is a mobile game that features mazes of optical illusions, and players clear the games by flipping the angles of the blocks to make it a walkable route. Her art evolved from collage-style paintings, where there was "nowhere to walk" in the created space, to a series where "there are clear ways to go." Chen pays special attention to the perspective she intends to offer, which can be subdivided into works that lead the audience to follow the guide. While some of her works tend to have more storytelling elements, others encourage the audience to stop at a fixed point and experience the view from that perspective.
After seeing Chen's works Incubation and Tortuous, Ho summed up Chen's creations as revealing much of her own personality. As Ho said, "She is an introverted person. She dresses and expresses things in a tactful, polite manner, and doesn't like colors that are too saturated. Thus it is understandable why the ink color in Chinese ink painting may be her favorite color tone." Ho also perceives the "hesitation" that remains evident in Chen's works, "I feel that she is more or less worried about what she chooses to do. She grasps this worry and wants to get rid of it through making art." In other words, the uneasiness stemming from a hesitant mind seems to be apparent in her friend’s eyes.
Review
Chen's art