An oil painting in the 美术画廊 depicts a woman and child burdened beneath the weight of all their belongings. 它的调色板是深色的, but a mysterious glow illuminates the two figures, banishing the shadows to the corners of the frame.
Overhead, a mobile-like assemblage of transparent vellum hangs from the ceiling. The tracing paper is covered with a montage of railroad maps, 火车图像, “在家”和“无家可归”这两个词,” and the identification and deportation documents of Chinese laborers who worked on the American railroads in the 19th century.
这牛皮纸又轻又不透明, while the painting’s dark hues and heavy-laden subjects feel far weightier. But the two are linked in their depiction of life as an immigrant or part of a diaspora, says 《365比分网电竞》陈彦兵21年, an 艺术 major who created the installation for her senior exhibition. 这个项目也有自传体的元素.
“All works are essentially self-portrait,” she says. “These works are all related to my experience as a migrant and as somebody who kind of came out of nothing.”
Murphy Yanbing Chen提供
Chen grew up in poverty in Yunnan Province in southwestern China. Her mother and her father are partial ethnic minorities, 景颇族和蒙古人, 谁集中在缅甸边境附近. 作为一个孩子, Chen often stayed with her grandmother while her mother earned a law degree to improve the family’s condition. 陈的奶奶教她画画, and her mother sometimes took her to a children’s art studio, 她在哪里尝试丙烯画.
Chen took an art history course before coming to the United States and initially applied to East Coast liberal arts colleges to continue studying art and art history. 推迟她的接受, she decided to stay with family friends in Alpine, 德州, for a year and establish her own painting studio.
在高山, 陈沉浸在画廊的场景中, 获得学分, became an exhibition assistant at the Chinati Foundation in nearby Marfa. She took more art history courses at Sul Ross State University and, 第一次, 学习油画.
After realizing that 德州 offered as many opportunities as the East Coast, she transferred to St. 爱德华在2019年1月. 美术史副教授 玛丽K. Brantl’s classes, Chen encountered the idea that all artworks are more than simply aesthetic endeavors. 每一幅作品,, drawing or sculpture is a product of the context in which it was created: the political and social environment, 艺术家与其他艺术家的关系, 宗教思想, 市场压力, 以及艺术界的主流哲学.
This idea of context radically reshaped Chen’s approach to art. 为她的毕业论文展览, she decided to combine a painting with an installation that would provide context about related labor and migration issues. Her project focuses on the stories of Chinese immigrants who built the railroads of the American west in the 19th century.
Murphy Yanbing Chen提供
Chen’s painting is based on a photo her mother took late at night of a mother and daughter waiting on a train platform in China. 这张照片是最近拍的, 但陈的画有一种永恒的品质, and the assemblage of vellum invites guests to imagine them as 19th-century immigrant railroad workers. Chen calls the process of superimposing the railroad maps and identification documents onto vellum “making a portrait without figuratively portraying” the Chinese workers. In the transparent paper she is bringing visibility to the multilayered identities of people who were marginalized and whose lives were poorly documented.
Until last year, Chen was planning to study art history in graduate school. 但后来, 2020年夏天, a Trump administration policy made international students enrolled exclusively in online courses — the only option at many universities during the pandemic — subject to deportation. 该政策后来被取消, 但陈意识到艺术是有力量的, she needed more practical tools to advocate for members of minority groups and immigrants. She started law school this fall at American University Washington College of Law, 位于华盛顿, D.C. ——她的导师布兰特推荐的一所学校.
A career in law offers Chen the chance to work on behalf of underrepresented communities. 她可以研究贫困法, 知识产权, 或者环境和文化保护, 比如文化遣返, the return of looted cultural artifacts to their country of origin. 虽然, 作为一名大一的法律系学生, 她还没有选择一个重点, her career will be shaped by her personal missions: To be responsible. To live lightly on the earth, avoiding overconsumption. 最终, 她希望回报帮助过她的人, 就像她的母亲, 她在西德克萨斯的朋友, 艺术教授 霍利斯哈蒙德 and other faculty in the 视觉研究 Department, and many other professors who guided her journey at St. 爱德华的.
“I want to do law because I have to learn the system in order to change it,” Chen says. “通过我的艺术和写作, 我的研究, 以及我未来的法律工作, I want to change life for the better for people around me.”
罗宾·罗斯的故事
肖像 & 视频墨菲陈由切尔西Purgahn
