Yanyun Chen (Chinese: 陈彦云;pinyin: Chén Yànyún; born 1986) is a Singaporean artist who works withcharcoaldrawings,animation andinstallation. Her works feature intergenerational family stories and cultural wounds, which explore tenuous relationships with traditions and scars that live in language.[1][2][3]
Chen was born inSingapore. She attendedNanyang Technological University and received a BFA in Digital Animation in 2009.[4] Following that, she completed a MA in Communications in 2012 and Phd in Philosophy, Art and Critical Theory in 2018 atEuropean Graduate School in Switzerland.[5]
Chen taught atYale-NUS College from 2015 to 2022.[6][1] At the College, she received the Georgette Chen Fellowship in 2020.[7] In 2021, she received the Andreas Teoh Contemporary Asian Art Program Fellowship.[8] She held the role of Professor of the Practice at theSchool of the Museum of Fine Art,Tufts University, inBoston, USA since 2023.[9]
Commissioned bySingapore Art Museum for the President's Young Talent 2018,The scars that write us is a series of scar portraits welded and drawn on mild steel.[10] Awarded the People's Choice Award, the exhibition offers a narrative on wounds and scars, and those that bear them.[11] In an interview with art writer Ian Tee, Chen speaks of "the scars that live in language", texturing the physical-psychological wounds on skin with trauma inflicted by a welding gun.[3]
Stories of a Woman and Her Dowry was the first solo exhibition atGrey Projects in 2019.[12][13] It was next exhibited as a group show with visual artistKanchana Guptain atObjectifs Centre for Photography and Film in 2022.[14] Curator Kimberley Shen describes their works "navigate the precarities of the cultural tropes and expectations of Asian women, in a palpable reclamation of tenderness and strength embedded in the feminine narrative and identity".[15] Chen shares that stories derived from intergenerational trauma can just as much be an intergenerational gift.[15]
Chen was awarded theArt Outreach IMPART Award in 2019.[16][17] She was awarded Best Art Direction at National Youth Film Awards forstop-motion short filmAutomatonomy, directed by Mark Wee and Jerrold Chong of Finding Pictures.[18][19]
^Pereira, Keenan (1 January 2022)."Thriving in the Unknown".www.nus.edu.sg. Archived from the original on 1 June 2023. Retrieved25 February 2024.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
