Tina Chiu-Jhin Chen 陳秋瑾

2020 Flower of Women

Artists to Watch - TAAC 2020-003

We invite you to breathe deeply everyday to test yourself in these hard-mind times. Today's artist to watch,Tina C.J. Chen, had a solo exhibition at the Pleiades Gallery in New York City. The exhibition reception on 3/21 was cancelled, and entire exhibit removed on March 22 due to the outbreak of the coronavirus, but we are here to share this great Taiwanese American artist and her art with you.

Tina Chen's soul garden provides a visually sublime as well as revealing alternative to the temporary crisis of the moment. The reticulated and delicate drawing on the blue and white porcelain is a way to reveal the essence of imperial splendor and the still life. Because of this global crisis, we are unable to participate fully in the pleasure that the colors promise; yet the light sorrow contained in the vase and the flowing green give hope to us.- Luchia Meihua Lee

  • Soul Garden, 2019, watercolor on paper, 30 x 22 in (76 x 56 cm), courtesy of the artist

  • Garden Series, 2017, watercolor on paper, 11x11 in (28x28 cm), courtesy of the artist

  • Soul Garden, 2019, watercolor on paper, 30 x 22 in (76 x 56 cm), courtesy of the artist

  • Garden Series, 2017, watercolor on paper, 11.5 x 8.23 in (29 x 21 cm), courtesy of the artist

  • Soul Garden, 2019, watercolor on paper, 30x5.5 in ( 76x14 cm), courtesy of the artist

  • Soul Garden series, 2019, watercolor on paper, 30x5.5 in ( 76x14 cm), courtesy of the artist

Taiwanese American artist Tina CJ Chen lives and works in Pennsylvania. Her recent creations are mainly in the Garden Series. Internet life has expanded our horizons, delineating times where the image is more real than the real world, and combined into a source of our information today. Through the use of plant images on social media, transformed with the imagination, Chen creates a mock sketch as do painters in order to reflect the paradox that life is full of both truth and distortion. In the Food Series, beautiful and edible foods seduce the spirit to reverberate between "appetite" and "erotic desire", and evoke the essence of humans' "colorfulness".

Chen gained her PhD from Penn State University, and her MFA from National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan. She has held numerous exhibition in the US and Taiwan.


A view of the exhibition at Gallery in NY, March 2020

"The apparently real yet unknown flowers and trees, their disproportionate sizes, and the unnatural dispositions in the containers,…. remind us of the serious question—"what is real?”—which is especially significant at the time when fake news is so prevalent. The relatively unrealistic and unstable mood in the paintings of the “Utopian Garden” exhibition are however adjusted in the paintings of the “Soul Garden” exhibition, reflecting the painter’s resettlement of soul after the new anchor of floating identity." 

- by Meng Shi Chen (陳孟熙) PhD, SUNY Binghamton, MA, Studies in Arts and Humanities, NYU