Photo: Linards Platacs

I am Chun Chen (she/her), an artist. Born in Shanghai, I live in Switzerland since 2010. I work with ordinary objects and substances that carry personal and social histories: worn garments, fruit, family photographs and household utensils. My earlier research into migration and integration now continues through material processes. Casting, moulding and imprinting recur throughout my practice. A fruit is burnt away inside a mould and reappears as a hollow bronze skin; a garment disappears in the kiln, leaving its imprint in porcelain; a family photograph is screen-printed in powdered spices. These processes move between destruction and preservation. Soft or perishable things become shells, cavities and traces, while the original object may be consumed. The burn-out process resonates with mourning practices familiar from my childhood, in which garments or paper representations of belongings are burned as offerings for the dead.

Through these material translations, I examine postmemory, absence and displacement as shaped by China’s rapid transformation and my life between Shanghai and Switzerland. Rather than fixing memory, I create forms in which preservation and disappearance occur together. What remains carries the shape of what is gone.