I-Yen Chen
Born 1990 Taipei, based between Melbourne and Taipei
We are soft, but so is our world.
As an artist, I am taken and moved by both the fragility of lives and the instability of the environment around us.
I-Yen Chen is a visual artist born in Taipei, Taiwan and currently based in Melbourne. I-Yen’s specialties are drawing, painting and ceramics. Her works are based on her life experience: encountering people; adapting to, or detaching from, a place; being surrounded or feeling isolated. A community focused artist, I-Yen constantly strives to bring together usually separate audiences, and to bring the experience of enjoying art to those often excluded from the world of galleries and opennings. I-Yen’s study of history and her experience working with people from different backgrounds has endowed her with a strong and sensitive approach toward issues of culture, allowing her to remain at once open and yet critical when confronting difference. To I-Yen, the medium of ceramic allows an artist to give abstract feelings and concepts a concrete shape, yet one that allows for the perpetuation of ambiguity and openness. In her ceramic works, she often plays with the tension drawn between ordinary function and the interest of the shape. She especially appreciates that the fragility of the ceramic medium can be deployed in such robust gestures and forms.
CV
EDUCATION
2016 Master of Contemporary Art
Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne
2014 Bachelor of Arts
History department, National Taiwan University
EXHIBITIONS
2020 轉身之藝 The Art of Transformation, National Taiwan Craft Research and Development Institute, Nantou, Taiwan (upcoming)
2019 Crossing Pain and Intimate Memories, Firstdraft, Sydney, Australia
A State of Obscurity, XPO, Enschede, the Netherlands
The Union Art Collection: Recent acquisitions 2016-18, George Paton Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
2018 RIFTS: Particulate Matter, Testing Ground, Melbourne, Australia
Shall We Have Some Tea…, May Tr.IPP Event, Transit Dance Studio, Melbourne, Australia
Point Cook Unknown, Point Cook Pop Up Park Pilot, Melbourne, Australia
2017 When Lands Float like Memory, Saltwater Community Center, Point Cook, Melbourne, Australia
Moreland Summer Show: Noel Counihan Commemorative Award, Counihan Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
Shall We Have Some Tea…, The Ownership Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
In the Creases of Time, Red Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
Changing Places, Linden New Art, Melbourne, Australia
2016 VCA Art Masters Exhibition, 2016, Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, Australia
The Union Collection: Recent Acquisitions 2012-2016, George Paton Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
蝕- nibble, erosion, eclipse, Fringe Festival, Chinese Museum, Melbourne, Australia
None of us are in here, VCA Student Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
流水環石 Flowing Water, Bordered Stones, George Paton Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
2015 The 2015 Mary & Lou Senini Student Art Award exhibition, McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
Joy to the Other World, VCA Student Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
Within/ Without, VCA Student Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
A Hundred Years of Landscape, Out-door exhibition, Jia-Yi, Taiwan
ARTIST RESIDENCY
2019 ARE (Artist Residency Enschede), Enschede, Netherland, April- June 2019
2018 Cloud Forest Collective Artist in Residence, October 2018 to May 2019
2017 Saltwater Artist in Residence - Wyndham Art Spaces, July to September, 2017
High school Art Mentoring and Education Program, Point Cook High school, Coordinated by University of Melbourne and VCA
AWARDS & COLLECTION
2017 Noel Counihan Commemorative Award, Finalist, Melbourne
2016 Nomination of the Visual Art Award, Melbourne Fringe Festival, 2016
(https://melbournefringe.com.au/news/story/visual-art-and-words-and-ideas-award-nominees-announced)
Private Collection
George Paton Gallery Collection
UMSU Creative Arts Grant, 2016
2015 The 2015 Mary & Lou Senini Student Art Award for Ceramics, Finalist, Melbourne
PUBLICATION & INTERVIEW
2018 Exhibition Review by Jessica Williams on Art+Australia online:
2017 Exhibition report by the LIMINAL Magazine
ABC interview about exhibition “Shall we have some tea…” with Jonathan Green
2016 Exhibition reports by the Melbourne Chinese Museum:
Triple J interview with Stacy Gougoulis
ABC interview with Hilary Harper
RRR Radio interview with Richard Watts
Vision Australia Phone interview :
COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES
2107 Mapping Point Cook, Melbourne
Studio Open day, Brunswick, Melbourne
2016 The Sensory Tour, George Paton Gallery, Chinese Museum, Melbourne
2014 The Dining Table in the Field, Yi-Lan, Hua-Lian, Jia-Yi, Taiwan
Series of artistic cooperations with an agricultural social enterprise.
2013 Eyes of the Tribe, Taitung, Taiwan
Interactive Photography program designed with children in Wulu aboriginal tribe.