I Yen Chen

Struggle is not easy to be seen, unless it shows its marks on flesh. 

 

What at first most entices, in the end brings you pain. 

 

“Crossing Pain and Intimate Memories” recreates and represents the various stages of one’s mentality during the process I think of as “passing through.” Borders and lines are not easily recognized or defined. Living in a contemporary society, we experience crossings of these lines more frequently than we may notice. Such crossings that seem enticing in the early stages often become barbed. But how could one’s struggle be acknowledged when there is no obvious wound? This project presents the subtleness of such struggle. None is accused as perpetrator, and yet many suffer. The audience are invited to enter a psychological landscape cautiously formed by the artist. The artist materializes the conceptual crossing into a physical action, through which perhaps memories of one’s own crossing may be awakened, float to the surface, and fall into the space itself to mingle with those of the artist.

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This exhibition is an extension of my research into borders. However, turning from the political to the personal, the exhibition explored the struggling yet enticing process one experiences in one’s mental world. Within this exhibition, I experimented with an interactive ceramic installation, inviting the audience to have physical contact with the ceramic. Through physical contact, I aimed to replicate, mimic the experience of crossing.

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Photo credit: Zan Wimberley