Susan Chen
After the opening of Susan Chen’s recent solo show “On Longing” at the Meredith Rosen Gallery, we had an insightful chat with the talented artist who recently completed her M.F.A at Columbia University. The previous twelve months in New York have been very productive for Chen. The canvases she has painted over the pandemic indicate a transformative year in her artistic career as she aims to express her feelings on the material world. NY has continued to be an inspirational and consistently productive source for the artist over the course of a single year, she has witnessed the fundamental cycles of corruption, decay, and renewal.
Susan Chen’s new body of work richly expresses her internal world as well as the external and carries hints of great impact on her artistic path from both her past and from the current pandemic. Her pictures are filled with fierce brushwork and vibrant strokes of color of all hues, soft pinks, deep blues, startling dabs of orange and yellow that are rooted in the strength and expressionistic elegance of her style. The juxtaposition of the indoor and the outdoor spaces invite the viewer to peek through her intimate environment where the small details, objects and texts are featured intentionally.
Inspired by revolutionary artists like Van Gogh, Soutine, Bonnard, Matisse and Hockney, Chen makes a profound departure from landscape painting to portraiture. She confronts and examines her sitters deliberately from her own perspective, yet she never neglects landscape and nature. Chen makes sure she always creates space for the elements of nature, which symbolizes “the sense of longing” for her.
As a multicultural artist, Chen’s works not only focus on her own identity but also the portrayal of the lives and the longtime struggles of Asian Americans. Through her compositions, which are charged with longing, nostalgia and melancholy, Chen grants visibility to her community. The sincere authenticity of these individuals is perfectly captured in her works.
Her choice of subjects, the constant harmony of the cascade of colors, the honesty in the study of her sitters, the continuous search for the meaning of equality, undoubtedly proclaim her profoundly childlike sincerity as well as her great love of human beings and nature.
Yasemin Vargi: What was it like growing up between two different cultures, Hong Kong and the U.K, was there a critical moment when you decided to follow your path as an artist?
Susan Chen: It was so drastically different – the juggling of living between two completely different worlds. Hong Kong was still a British colony up till 1997, and there were a lot of ties between HK and the UK which is how I got the scholarship opportunity to go to school. I was taught from an early age to be aware of the privileges that came with being associated with whiteness. If you were British, you were allowed to live on The Peak. Your parking tickets could be waived if you replied to the police officer in English versus Cantonese. If you went to school abroad in the West and returned back to Hong Kong, you would automatically have a higher social status in Hong Kong society, and could skip some of the entry level jobs and go straight into management. There is, furthermore, this on-the-ground racism that sadly still exists in Hong Kong where you are treated differently depending on whether you’re “locally” from Hong Kong or from China. Growing up, I often saw the way my grandparents were mistreated, harassed, or spoken down to just because of the way they spoke with a heavy Chinese accent (they immigrated to Hong Kong from Fujian China in the 1990s after I was born).
Attending school abroad throughout my adolescence, I was frequently going from a culture of Chinese dim sum, chopsticks, milk teas, and Canto-pop, to a world of Sunday Roast, Harry Potter, the Royal Family, and classic British rain. I then moved to the States for college and ended up immigrating for The American Dream and perhaps, survival (we all knew Hong Kong would eventually be absorbed by China). I suppose all of this has made me a sort of permanently homesick and nostalgic kind of person, which might feed back into the art.
I have typical Asian parents that just want their kids to become doctors, lawyers, or engineers… so I was always discouraged from being an artist. I don’t know if there was a critical moment I decided to follow my path as an artist, but I do believe in following your gut and chasing your soul's desires. I think good things always come from that… and to hop on the artist path definitely had to do with trying to stay true to the self.
Susan Chen, Lyly Louanghaksaphone, 2020, oil on canvas, 40 x 30 inches photo: Adam Reich
Y.V: Do you find that New York’s art scene inspires or influences your art?
S.C: I love the NYC artist community – it’s been such a pleasant surprise, as they often tell you how cutthroat NYC can be when you first arrive here. It’s a small world, and you start to notice the different cliques artists run in. But you can also always count on artists to have your back here: it’s a very supportive community (or maybe I’ve just been lucky enough to experience this). Many will connect with you via Instagram and then you can meet them in real life at their openings. There are constantly shows (you can get invited to an opening every week) and I love that energy!
I approach museum shows and shows by living artists very differently from a mental standpoint. When I’m at an art fair, I think of these artists as individuals who woke up one morning and just had this desire and urge to create something out of scratch -- so am looking at it from a place of fascination versus comparison. When I’m at a museum, that is where I go to learn and bring ideas back to the studio.
Y.V: Who are your greatest influences?
S.C: All the artists in my Streetcars of Desire (2020) painting: Van Gogh, Le Pho, Soutine, Burchfield, Bonnard, Matisse, Hockney, Richard Hull, Kerry James Marshall, Gregory Amenoff, Aliza Nisenbaum, Susanna Coffey, Shara Hughes, and art critics Jerry Saltz and John Berger. I am also really into John Bratby these days and the activism of Tomas Vu, as well as, of course, my peers at Columbia MFA!
Y.V: Your recent paintings make reference to political and societal issues that are taking place, from your previous Hockney inspired vivid landscapes to Asian- American portrait paintings, how has your work evolved over the years?
S.C: My entryway into painting was via the landscape. I had gone to see a David Hockney show A Bigger Picture during my sophomore summer, and it completely blew me away. It was the reason I decided to last minutely double major in visual arts in college.
The landscape, for me, suggested this sense of longing. Thinking about Matisse’s window painting from his time in the South of France during WWII, or Bonnard’s landscapes outside the window: It’s this “I am here, but I’d rather be there” sort of feeling. I was painting landscapes in a similar way to how the kids of Narnia, or Alice in Wonderland, or James and the Giant Peach go on these adventures in their backdoors and end up being able to resolve a sense of personal conflict throughout their journey. Yet, where they end up is exactly where they had begun in the first place. That’s what painting these landscapes felt like to me.
When I started my MFA, I wanted to do something that was different and out of my comfort zone, because I knew I would get a lot of help from my peers and professors. Portraiture, for me, was the exact opposite of the landscape -- you could no longer run away, but rather, you’d be confronting a human being that’s right in front of you (whether a sitter, yourself, or any human face on the canvas). A couple of situations further triggered me into diving into representation. These include watching the film Crazy Rich Asians (2018) that was one of the first films with an all Asian cast in 25 years that came out since Joy Luck Club (1993), seeing Charles White’s exhibition at The Art Institute of Chicago, and also realizing throughout my entire MFA, that we did not have any critiques from another Asian female painter or professor (apart from my peers). It turns out, there really is a power that comes with being able to see yourself in everyday situations or the media.
This is especially so in America where society can feel so focused on black versus white, and when Asian Americans don’t fit in on either side, they can be casted as either good or bad depending on the political mood. One moment you’re an alien threat, and the next, you’re a model minority.
Susan Chen, Arnie’s, 2020, oil on canvas, 40 x 50 inches photo: Adam Reich
Y.V: It seems like you have completed most of your recent works during the pandemic, can you tell us about the process of creating your work and how you managed to work with your sitters?
S.C: I find most of my sitters on social media. Because I’m working to highlight Asian American representation in painting, some Facebook groups that I have found sitters from included: Subtle Asian Traits, Subtle Asian Life NYC, Chinatowns of New York, and all the Andrew Yang Facebook groups. What usually happens is that I linger on these channels for a month or so, just to get a temperature check on what the conversations happening locally on the ground are like between different Asian American communities.
When I think the timing is appropriate, I’ll make a post saying that I’m looking for sitters. I remember one of the first times doing this, I thought I would only receive 3 or 4 emails, but I was really surprised when I received almost 100 in my inbox. Many of these sitters wanted to participate because they too felt this yearning to contribute to empowering Asian Americans. Most of these sitters are strangers, so I don’t usually meet them until the day they rock up to my studio to be painted. I feel pretty lucky that everyone I’ve worked with so far has been totally normal, considering there is an element of stranger danger to my whole practice. Most sitters have also never been to an art studio before, so it’s a totally new experience for them. I always begin with some drawings before getting into the painting, just to help the sitter feel more at ease. I also prep my basic palette an hour ahead of time and adjust the colors accordingly to their skin tones or personality once they arrive.
I think the rising Gemini in me allows me to be naturally curious about people’s lives. A lot of the times I’ll tell sitters to bring a book or that they can watch a film on my laptop. But because five hours is a long time, we usually end up chatting about what’s happening in the sitter’s lives: conversations about family, home, immigration, prejudice, identity, their dating lives, gossip etc. It’s a really intimate experience, and I’ve found that often on random days, even months later, that I’ll wake up or be commuting, and I’ll wonder what my sitters are up to these days.
During the pandemic, however, I lost access to painting my sitters, and so had to start painting myself. I also had to get used to this new live-work schedule. I turned my 9 by 12 - foot living room into a studio and used a floor length mirror to begin experimenting with painting self-portraits. These portraits are now in the show.
Y.V: When interpreting your sitters from real life to canvas, which impressions and aspects do you play around with or try to emphasize?
S.C: I really want to capture their face, but also try not to put too much pressure on myself to make it a photographic translation. And if the painting takes off on its own and doesn’t end up looking exactly 100% like the person, I have to remind myself to let the paint take off on its own and not to restrict it. I have no expectations of my sitters, they rock up as is, and I try to make the situation as natural and comfortable for them as possible. I guess the short answer is, I just try to capture them as is. I also try to finish painting their face before my time with them runs out, and then would complete their clothes and hands later on, often taking a photo of them right before they leave the studio.
Susan Chen, COVID-19 Survival Kit, 2020, oil on canvas, 40 x 30 inches photo: Adam Reich
Y.V: The empowerment of women is a developing issue in modern society and in the art world. In what ways do you think women should support and empower each other?
S.C: We have to bring each other up, in any way that we can. Some examples include: being inclusive, sharing opportunities with one another, providing mentorship, pushing back on situations that seem sexist even if it’s the small things in your everyday life.
This summer, I read Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In and I’m also a huge fan of Michelle Obama’s book Becoming and her latest podcast that began this July. These are women in positions of power trying to uplight others by sharing their stories and experiences. Sheryl Sandberg talked about the importance of mentorship, and if you’re in a position of power, to sit at the table so that you can advocate for women’s perspectives and issues at a table full of men. Michelle Obama is very encouraging of women to share their stories, because it creates empathy and allows you to see how others might be in the same boat as you, and thus allowing for the creation of political will on how to change situations. I recently questioned this fast food restaurant I was at, why the diaper changing station was only available in women’s bathrooms and not men’s as well. I think in the art world, it’s showing up for each other’s shows, questioning the statistics of male to female artists participating in the marketplace and our institutions, following IG accounts like @womeninthearts @guerrillagirls @frida_and_ @arthistorywomen @collective131 @artshesays and staying looped in the conversation. Women are also often afraid to ask for things: so being never afraid to just ask (the worst is they say no).
Y.V: Do you have any new projects or works coming up in the near future?
S.C: Because I just emptied out my studio for this show, I am now starting on a clean blank slate and ready to go at it again to produce my MFA Thesis Show, which has now been postponed till April 2021 because of the pandemic. This show is also likely to travel to LA afterwards. I’m figuring out a way where I can continue working with sitters over Zoom, which is making me feel a bit anxious, because it’s venturing into new territory again. The bonus about this pandemic is that you’re already so terrified, you might as well go all out with conquering the fear of the unknown.
