Kristi Chen views Shadows Between Us as a collaboration between past and future, an intersection of ancestral heritage, contemporary identity and human environmental interventions. As the artist states, ‘‘parts of my identity are embedded in the pieces I created, not a portrait, but a sense of my fragmented existence.’’ Showcasing objects ranging from woven pieces to garden sculptures and scented artefacts to furniture, the artist works with cords made from rubber and plastic in combination with natural woods while drawing on a familial archive of ancient knowledge. The paternal side of her family wove baskets as a means of survival in Shouning County, in Fujian province, China, while on her maternal side of the family, her great-grandfather Ho Chat Yuen was a Lingnan-style Chinese painter, blending Eastern and Western perspectives in his practice. Kristi Chen honours and expands on these ancestral techniques, incorporating synthetic and natural materials that symbolise the evolution of heritage in a modern context. Using her experience as a sculptor to create and preserve an intergenerational dialogue, the artist creates works that convey a certain ephemerality, transparency and fragility.
Kristi Chen is a multidisciplinary artist who uses sculpture and installation to explore the nature of identity, diaspora and methods of cultivating lost family archives. Raised in Singapore, United States, Canada, and Hong Kong (SAR), she experienced constant migration, which influenced the subject matter and materiality of her artistic practice. Seeking comfort within her diasporic experience using sculptural forms to communicate identity, she creates imaginative creatures and dystopic, surreal environments born from both collective and personal experiences. She graduated from OCAD University in 2021 with a BFA in Sculpture/Installation. Notable exhibitions include Also a Good Place to Sulk at Zalucky Contemporary, How to Cook a Wolf at twoseventwo Toronto (2023), In the Rhubarb at Between Pheasants Contemporary, Kerns Township (2023), Are We Away? at Artscape Gibraltar Point, Toronto (2022) and Woven – Objects, Materials and Space(s) Beyond Measure at Xpace Cultural Centre, Toronto (2021). Chen recently participated at the Rimbun Dahan residency in Selangor, Malaysia.
www.kristichen.com
