Jia Chen – Exhibiting Artist at Wilden Creativity Day

Today We Are Introducing Jia Chen To You, One Of Our 2016 Wilden Creativity Award Finalists!

On Wednesday we introduced you to Jeff Piattelli, one of our singer-songwriters at our second annual 2016 Wilden Creativity Day on Sunday, June 5th. Today we are please to introduce you to Jia Chen, BFA Graduate from UBC Okanagan and finalist of our 2016 Wilden Creativity Award.

Jia first came to the Okanagan when she was 19-year-old. She originally comes from Shanghai, a frantic and overcrowded city in the eastern China. She has always been interested in observing the mundane and pays attention to mostly unnoticed moments that happen every day, such as riding the bus to school. Jia is interested in recording her observations of these ordinary moments through her drawings.

The major theme in Jia’s work is time. It is worth mentioning that in Mandarin time and space is one word: Shikong. This implies that when thinking about time, she relates a specific moment to a space. The Chinese perception of time and space is deeply embedded with Jian culture. Jian means interval, or in between, and represents the grey space between the interior and exterior, and the interval spaces between the past, present, and future. Jian culture emphasizes the ambiguity of time and space, as well as the blurred lines between the material world and spiritual world. Spiritual creatures that mediate among the gods, humankind and ghosts reside in these intervals. This is what spurs her curiosity towards overlooked moments and the liminal spaces that constitute the mundane.

Jia is also deeply interested in seriality and repetition as a way to link her practice to the notion of time. For her current work, she represents everyday life objects into symbolic patterns, placing them into complex, multiple perspectives. Through repeated images she wishes to transcend boredom and to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary.

At the event she will exhibit one of her artworks called “Heart of the Okanagan Valley”, which is an art piece made with ink on rice paper.

We hope to see you on our patio at the Wilden Presentation Centre on June 5th for our Creativity Day 🙂