Interview
Emily Chen
Emily Yuwei Chen is a distinguished fine artist with a specialized focus in painting and jewelry design. Originating from Hong Kong and currently residing in New York, her academic journey led her to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design. Here, she refined her skills in both Painting and Jewelry & Metalsmithing, which fostered a unique integration of two-dimensional and three-dimensional artistic concepts. Chen's artistic endeavors are characterized by a commitment to interdisciplinary exploration, merging her expertise in these domains to forge innovative art forms. Her exceptional work has been recognized through the award of a Creative Art Grant and has been prominently featured in esteemed exhibitions, including the New York Jewelry Week and at the Jamaican Art Center. Chen's diverse portfolio captivates a wide-ranging audience, reflecting her versatile engagement with various art spaces.
What is your background and how did you start your journey in the art world?
“I've always wanted to live differently, by that I mean I could study my own sentiments and experiences without conforming to the typical nine to five corporate regime. The act of making gave me an alternative existence, a place that I could go to and deal with problems. It also became a vessel to ask questions in understanding the world around us.”
What does your work aim to say? Does it comment on any current social or political issues?
“In attaining intersectionality between image, object, and thing trichotomy, I built a body of work that follows the format of a table setting to situate non-representation into reality. Placed on the wall are three paintings accompanied by three spoons that connect through formal language. The ontology of wood, metal, and painting materialize as a meal through the visual language of a dining set. Using “food” as a cultural vessel to explore broader ethics of consumption and its romanticization in late-stage American capitalism. Further is how technology feeds into consumption and how the digital space continues to inhibit our perception and relationship to landscapes. The three traditional arts of painting, jewelry, and woodworking represent material longevity, similar to the fundamental cultural function of a “meal.””
Do you plan your work in advance, or is it improvisation?
“I never start with a plan. I work very automatically and intuitively. I like to let a line or shape guide me in search for a new space or object. This way it becomes more of a conversation between material and my hand.”
Are there any art world trends you are following?
“Akin to The Dinner Party installation by Judy Chicago, the employment of multiple mediums coherently intersected painting and form as one object. This monumental installation is shaped in a triangular configuration. The inclusion of cross mediums like ceramics, China-painting, needle and fiber techniques, symbolizes women’s achievements in relation to craft. There are 39 plate settings, each commemorating an important woman in history. Chicago worked in mediums traditionally associated with women’s craft as low art and raised to high art. Referencing butterfly and velvet imagery, while embroidering nine hundred and ninety-nine important women in history on the table clothe. As you move through each plate settings, the imagery in the plates progressively arises and eventually becomes the plate. Once the plate becomes sculptural, the china paint was no longer used as an image making tool - renderings of fruits, but rather secondary to form - functioning as color to accentuate the forms.”
What process, materials and techniques do you use to create your artwork?
“My process carries through the digital to physical, from wood to metal to paint. Painting is a way of layering optics, layering object/“thing,” encapsulating the light that runs through a surface. Through the paint, shading is an additional space-making technique. Hand rendering illusions and setting the atmosphere of the place as the brush and the digital ground converse through the act of painting. The experience of painting becomes the idea of something- the realization of commands from the digital tool to an image. This hand intervention unifies this dichotomy.”
“In attaining intersectionality between image, object, and thing trichotomy, I built a body of work that follows the format of a table setting to situate non-representation into reality.”
What does your art mean to you?
“I always classify my work as a exploration rather than and explanation. As if it is always attaining but never reaching. Every piece proposes a questions, no a black or white answer. This curious grey area is what I find most important.”
What’s your favorite artwork and why?
“That would be Judy Chicago's installation at the Brooklyn museum. I really like the collaboration cross disciplines and the way that craft as a discipline is used as subject. Her work merges 3 dimensional and 2 dimensional thinking in a very intentional way that I aspire to do with my own.”
Have you had any noteworthy exhibitions you'd like to share?
“I recently exhibited at the New York Jewelry Week Discover Feature, New York (2023) and I will be exhibiting at the Parables of the Unknown , Jamaica Art Center, Queens, New York in 2024.”
Website: www.emilychenstudios.com
Instagram: @emilychenstudio
