Artist Statement
I make sculptures and installations that propose an analogy between the systems within our bodies and mechanisms of our built environment. I use materials like paper pulp, foam, clay, and wax — materials that imprint and protect, to reference forms inside the body. I transform their scale to call upon an uncanny sense of seeing something both recognizable and unidentifiable. I want audiences to experience familiar objects anew. At the core my work asks: what constitutes personhood?
For my Hunter MFA thesis exhibition, “Ripe Spoils”, I chose key materials- citrus fruits, a skull model, clay, wax, paper, wood, and plant fragments, to explore the bodily experience. Our body is a series of problems dispersed in space: gravity, digestion, regeneration, stressors, and meaning-making. Fruits traverse national boundaries more effortlessly than people, who navigate social, emotional, and political trials. I collected nearly a hundred citrus fruits past their prime, to observe their changes in appearance, scent, and weight. A sour scent can be alluring and repulsive. In Jenny Zhang’s book “Sour Heart”, sourness signifies a complex bond between immigrant children and parents. In Chinese, 酸 (SUĀN) also means to ache. My work “Altar for Entrances and Exits'' accentuates passage between the thresholds. Placed above the gallery entrance, these fruits are only visible from underneath. This sacred space within a commercial setting is inspired by the altars I came across in Chinese, Malaysian, and Thai restaurants around New York City.
Bio
Yan Cynthia Chen is a New York City based artist and educator who works primarily in sculpture and installation. Her recognizable yet unidentifiable forms evoke gestures and feelings inside the body. She transforms functional forms to draw analogies between structures of the body and the functions of architecture. Chen holds an MFA from Hunter College and a BFA in Sculpture from The Rhode Island School of Design. Chen has participated in the Bronx Museum AIM program and the Yale Norfolk Summer Residency. In 2021 Chen had a solo exhibit, Slippage, at Olympia gallery and participate in the AIM Biennial at the Bronx Museum. She has participated in group shows such as The Stories we Tell Ourselves at Longwood Gallery, La Banda at Tappeto Volante gallery, Implied Body at Assembly Room, In this House of Sky at Westbeth Gallery, and On the Stump at Proto Gallery.