Siyu Chen
FINE ART
Siyu Chen is a multidisciplinary artist of the Chinese diaspora working primarily in drawing, text and video. Her work explores the ghostly sensations between lingering dreams and desires over belonging. Derived from fragments of everyday life, autobiographical details, and visual culture, she creates spatial narratives evoking emotions that remain invisible to hegemonic systems of power. Siyu is currently based in Brooklyn, New York.
JUNE 8, 2025
Hi Siyu! Many of your drawings are of still-life objects. What kinds of objects tend to appear in your work, and what are the reasons behind the choices?
I approach objects in my drawings through an autofictional lens, with their meanings often emerging from everyday life or my interpretation of autobiographical details. I began the project "Traces of Evaporated Wings" while moving to a new neighborhood in New York. Moving is not unusual for me—I’ve relocated almost every year over the past decade, including during the years I lived in my hometown of Shanghai. I am interested in exploring the state of a living space that exists between arrival and departure. Cardboard boxes recur in nearly every drawing in the project. They are containers that appear so frequently in my life that I no longer purchase storage bins made of more durable materials. In my drawings, the boxes are sealed with tape, half-open, half-closed, or stacked together.
I approach objects in my drawings through an autofictional lens, with their meanings often emerging from everyday life or my interpretation of autobiographical details. I began the project "Traces of Evaporated Wings" while moving to a new neighborhood in New York. Moving is not unusual for me—I’ve relocated almost every year over the past decade, including during the years I lived in my hometown of Shanghai. I am interested in exploring the state of a living space that exists between arrival and departure. Cardboard boxes recur in nearly every drawing in the project. They are containers that appear so frequently in my life that I no longer purchase storage bins made of more durable materials. In my drawings, the boxes are sealed with tape, half-open, half-closed, or stacked together.
You work across many media. How do you decide whether an object should be drawn, written about, sculpted, or presented in a different form?
The decision often comes quite spontaneously. Writing, the backbone of my research process, forms the foundation of my work. I am drawn to quick journaling and bullet-point notes created during solitary moments in daily life. I consider these writings as studies for my longer drawings. Once I write to a point where I feel ready to translate specific sensations into drawing, I begin with quick thumbnails. These help me determine the placement of objects within the composition. However, they are not strict prescriptions. I remain open to improvisational moments throughout the drawing process.
Are there any emotional or symbolic meanings of objects in your work?
Although the choice of objects emerges from deeply personal experiences, I am always interested in moments when drawing preserves the personal while opening up to shared sensations on a human level. These moments cannot be forced. One of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha carries what I mean by that:
"neither you nor i
are visible to each other
i can only assume you hear me
i can only hope you hear me."
Can you talk more about how the objects in your art carry your personal experiences and shared sensations on a human level?
I consider myself a “space-maker,” creating spatial narratives through fragments. The objects, as mentioned in a previous response, emerge from my lived experiences. Their appearance in the drawing is already the result of a series of translations and transcriptions of those translations. I am always interested in the losses and gains that occur through this process. It is in these shifts that my current state of living transforms the past, enabling me to see beyond my previous perceptions. It is also a deeply imaginative and generative process.
Can you talk about your creative process and how the process influences the creative outcome?
During past studio visits, I’ve often heard visitors remark on the patience and time my drawings must require. I do spend long hours standing still at my studio wall with pen and paper. Each drawing takes anywhere from 20 hours to a full month of work, depending on its size and the scope of the “problem” I’m trying to resolve or explore. If I’m working a part-time job, the process can take even longer.
I work in stillness, even when there’s a lot happening in my head or through my hands. While I often listen to audiobooks, podcasts, or music as I work, there are days when I feel the need to remain in silence. Silence gives me the space to confront and reflect on difficult questions, whether they relate directly to the drawing or to something outside my practice.
It seems your drawings are deeply engaged with emotional reflections. Does your artistic practice hold tension, or release it?
It’s such a complex question. Tension is measured in relation to the intensity of forces, which can mean very different things depending on one’s medium. As an image-maker, I see my task as deciding how the surface of an image invites the viewer’s eye to gather, fixate, and move. The encounter with an image is often much quicker than with an installation or a film. In the latter, the viewer must walk through the work or watch it unfold from beginning to end. An image, by contrast, is more like viewing a scene through a window. It leaves a first impression almost instantaneously.
Despite the work involved in navigating tension on the surface of an image, the moment of revealing the image to a viewer is a moment of release. It is when I witness how a viewer navigates the tensions I have created within the image.
Despite the work involved in navigating tension on the surface of an image, the moment of revealing the image to a viewer is a moment of release. It is when I witness how a viewer navigates the tensions I have created within the image.