Linhuei Chen

Fenix Museum of Migration plans to publish a new Rotterdam book with essential perspectives of immigrants and newcomers in Rotterdam. I am commissioned for the research process and the illustration of this book. The content of this book will be determined based on the results of various participatory workshops and city walking tours with Rotterdam citizens from diverse cultural backgrounds.

I received the invitation from Nest to make a painting (247x 200 cm) as part of a massive painting mural project for the music festival Down the Rabbit Hole together with other great artists. With a beautiful theme, “Acradia,” it inspired me to connect my Plantae project. With this painting, I wish to bring the viewers to enter (part of) this world: where people’s memories about plants intertwine, connect and evolve freely, where there is no border, nor the hierarchy of colors and culture.

I showed works from the series Memory Diaspora Reminiscence Objects.

This series is influenced by my experience giving art therapy to demented people during the pandemic. I used Dutch-reminiscent objects to retrieve their memories and help
them to remember who they were. As a Taiwanese immigrant, I wonder what kinds of objects should be used for people with transcultural backgrounds. The works presented at the fair express my experiences exploring memories among different cultures.

Triggered by my social practice in a Dutch nursing home during Covid pandemic lockdown, I wanted to research on transcultural care and co-living space for immigrants in the Netherlands. During this residency, I developed a board game called Village of Forgetting & Remembering (2023) where players design their transcultural retirement village, with which we explore the sense of belonging through cultural aspects.

Echo to Every Footstep is a cultural manifestation that delves into the complexities between the South East & East Asian diasporic communities in the multicultural Dutch society, aiming to break archetypal portrayals. I presents a painting with which I transformed transcultural people's notions of home into collective ideas based on the result of the research project: Mental Image analysis of Transcultural People's Notions of Home in 2021.

Different kinds of optical viewers appear in my work as metaphors for how I look at my past and observe my life in the Netherlands. During the winter session at V2, I explored the visual effects created by the stereoscope: merging two images and forming the third possibility by engaging the viewers' personal visual processing experience in the brain. For me, the constantly merging, overlapping, and changing status serves as a metaphor for how I experience cultural hybridity.

My works were selected to show in Young Art Kaohsiung 2021, which is held by Bureau of Cultural Affairs Kaohsiung City Government to support emerging artists. 34 artists were selected this year.

Invited by boox.space to present my artist book "The Third Space" and artworks belong to this series. Some sketches made during the writing of the book will be shown for the first time. Some new works will also be showing during this exhibition.

During this open atelier event, Linhuei Chen presented the result of her participatory project "Mental Image Analysis on Transcultural People's Notion of Home", in which she gave several online art therapy workshops for people who couldn't go back home due to covid restrictions to reflect on their ideas about home and homesick. Chen presented the drawings made by the participants and the painting she made based on the analysis she did from the drawings.

This artist talk was given as part of the Fine Art Seminar program. During this lecture, I presented my research book: the Third Space, and my works related to diaspora theory and Homi Bhabha's cultural hybridity. Together with the students, we discussed post-colonialism theories and shared our personal experiences.

This workshop is one of PANT online series. Every month one artist is invited to give a lecture or workshop to share their practice with the participants. In this workshop, I used art therapy to guide the participants to explore their feelings about home and homesickness during the Corona pandemic.

"How to Get Directions in the Middle of the Water" is a large triptych video installation. Each video expresses the inner-personal experiences from different generations: the artist father, the artist and her children. Off Screen, together with Hilton Art Lab, is organizing the video work exhibition Closed Encounters. Monumental projections in the form of triptychs, diptychs and single work by filmmakers and visual artists show the expressiveness of moving images in all its richness.