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

2019     Crossing Pain and Intimate Memories, Firstdraft, Sydney, Australia (Current)
             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.