Yanyun Chen

Dr. Yanyun Chen is a visual artist known for her drawing, new media, and installation practice. 

Biography of Dr. Yanyun Chen

Dr. Yanyun Chen was born in 1986 in Singapore. She received her PhD in Philosophy, Art, and Critical Thought from the European Graduate School in 2018, after completing an MA in Communications from the same institution in 2014, and a degree from Nanyang Technological University School of Art Design and Media in 2009.

Chen's works have been exhibited internationally in locations such as Buenos Aires, South Korea, Canada, the USA, Belarus, The Netherlands, and the Czech Republic. Her notable achievements include the National Arts Council Young Artist Award (2020), the Prague International Indie Film Festival Q3 Best Animation Award (2020), the ArtOutreach IMPART Visual Artist Award (2019), and the National Youth Film Awards Best Art Direction Award (2019).

In addition to her artistic practice, Chen serves as the Arts Practice Coordinator and Lecturer for the Humanities division of Yale-NUS College in Singapore. She is also the founder of the illustration and animation studio Piplatchka and a partner at the publishing house Delere Press LLP. Chen lives and works in Singapore.

Dr. Yanyun Chen's Art Style

Dr. Yanyun Chen's art delves into the aesthetic, cultural, and technological inheritances on one's body, unraveling fictional and philosophical notions of embodiment. Her work is grounded in the physicality of human and botanical forms. She builds two primary trains of thought throughout her works: one focusing on bodies and the other on constructs.

In her exploration of bodies, Chen researches cultural wounds, dowry traditions, hereditary scars, philosophies of nudity, and etymology, investigating stories as the skin we wear. In her examination of constructs, she questions the practice of memorializing the artifice in art, contrasting it with the experience of witnessing the decay and death of what lies beyond oneself.

Her recent works include "Furious Fires" (2020), "False Truths" (2020), "Women in Rage" (2019), "Stories of a Woman and Her Dowry" (2019), "The Scars that Write Us" (2018), "Skinning Nudity" (2018), and "Flower Flights" (2018).