Wang Chen

Wang Chen’s work incorporates digital video, performance, 3D game design, sculpture, drawing, costume fabrication and sound design. By layering these different mediums, she constructs immersive alternate realities that probe the intersections of myth, imagination, and identity across both physical and virtual landscapes, crafting dreamscapes that envelop the viewer.

Fractured Delights reimagines landscapes through the complex experiences of migrant displacement and identity transformation – it is not only a physical movement from one place to another but also a continuous inner journey, involving the ongoing recalibration of an individual in both worldly and spatial dimensions. The visitor of the exhibition is led into a captivating virtual world and encouraged to think about social issues.

This work combines digital technology and traditional artistry, creating an immersive experience exploring the shifting layers of identity and belonging among complex political backdrops. It presents a landscape of entangled and pulsating elements that together present ways of considering possibilities of imagined worlds. Fractured Delights demonstrates numerous processes of making and breaking: drawings, uniforms, performances and sounds are built up into complex image structures only to lead to a collapsible, unsuccessful utopia. 

The design of the costumes is inspired by Ancient East Asian mythology, including intricate patterns, vibrant colors, and fabrics keyed to futuristic aesthetics. These costumed performances are pre-recorded, choreographed in front of a green screen, intertwined with digital terrains, and presented in groups to express, transform, and transport abound in fantastical new worlds.

The digital landscape uses surreal, multilayered patterns where each blade of grass and each stone is painted by hand and translated by the computer into a part of the scene. The transformation of physical painting/performance to digital pixels reflects the migrant experience of shifting cultural heritage, stories, and hope into virtual platforms that can preserve but, most importantly, continue forward. 

Through the journey of this video, the artist draws upon their personal narrative as an immigrant and expands to a broader migrant social, cultural, and living experience through multimedia expression.

Artist

Wang Chen(China, 1991) received a BFA in painting and printmaking (Virginia Commonwealth University, 2014) and an MFA in photography (Rochester Institute of Technology, 2018). She has exhibited nationally and internationally (Fotografiska Stockholm,Fotografiska Shanghai,RoswellMuseum, LaurenPowellProjects, The Immigrant Artist Biennial, Alfred University, Crosstown Art Center) and nominated for fellowships, awards and residencies (New York Foundation for the Arts Artist Fellow, MacDowell Fellowship, Vermont Studio Center, NARS Artist Foundation and Roswell Artist in Residency).