Yen-Ting Chung
Exhibition & Residency:
June 1 – August 30, 2011

Taiwanese Artist Yen-Ting Chung creates a pared-down, primitive world, one existing as though at the beginning of time, and imbues the creatures that populate it with a sense of quiet alienation. The flightless birds, chubby kiwi-like creatures, wolf-like creatures, long snake-like creatures and unknown creatures build up her personal mythology. Those creatures were made up by basic strokes from writing the Chinese characters. Chung took apart the Chinese characters and put them back together to become a new “creature”.

The ancient creators of the Chinese characters observed the animals and made them pictographic Chinese characters. The pictographic Chinese characters in her drawings went through a language migration in that they were translated into anthropomorphic characters from a fictional cosmology to represent her worldview. Deconstructing the Chinese characters and creating her own characters is like an observation of her inner self which reflects the world she lives in. Through the calligraphy-style drawing, sculptures and animation, she finds where the creatures live, what that world looks like and how they develop their world. It is a place Chung looks forward to discovering and where she belongs.