About
We are soft, so is our world.
I-Yen Chen 陳宜艷 (b. 1990, Taipei, Taiwan) is a visual artist currently based in Italy. Her practice is rooted in an ongoing inquiry into fragility—as a condition shared by bodies, landscapes, histories, and belief systems. Working primarily with ceramics, installation, and mixed media, Chen explores how humans relate to the spaces they inhabit, and how landscapes—both physical and imagined—are shaped by memory, labor, and storytelling.
Chen’s work is grounded in the concept of the metaphorical landscape. Rather than understanding landscape as a fixed or objective entity, she approaches it as a mutable field where emotional, political, and cultural layers coexist. These landscapes are not only geographical, but also psychological and historical: terrains formed through movement, migration, and the passage of time. Her practice often asks how we perceive borders, how we narrate place, and how material itself can become a carrier of memory and belief.
Central to her methodology is what she describes as “mapping with clay.” Ceramic petals form her primary visual vocabulary, capable of transforming into landforms, living habitats, marine routes, fungi, or extensions of the human body. Through repetition, shifting, and reconfiguration, these forms continuously change meaning. Chen also analogizes her practice to the famous creation myth— NuWa (女媧), who sculpted humans from clay. Through slow, repetitive labor, Chen creates ceramic elements as thin as eggshells, each marked by fingerprints and gestures. Like human beings, these forms share resemblance while retaining individuality, emphasizing vulnerability, care, and interdependence.
Chen has showed with various gallery spaces and institutions across Taiwan, Australia, and Europe. Her works are widely collected by both public and private sectors. In 2023, Chen was selected as a Laureat of the Montresso* Art Foundation. This experience significantly shaped her approach to long-term, site-responsive research.