About the artist
Gwen Yen Chiu is a Chicago based Taiwanese-American artist. Born in the United States and raised in a multicultural and multilingual family, her work has been an exploration about home, belonging and identity in the Asian diaspora. Her metal sculptures are heavily influenced by her upbringing in Chinese Calligraphy and painting. Yen Chiu initially attended The Rhode Island School of Design for fashion design, and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, receiving her BFA with a focus in sculpture from Chicago in 2018. Yen Chiu's 12 ft welded aluminum sculpture 'Thought Vortex' was awarded the Chicago Sculpture Exhibit's Richard Hunt Award in 2021. Her work has been shown at EXPO Chicago, The Union League Club, Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art and the Koehnline Museum of Art. She is currently represented by McCormick Gallery in Chicago.
“ My mother who immigrated to the United States, was very adamant about me, being born in the United States, to not lose my Taiwanese heritage. This not only included her teaching me Mandarin Chinese and Japanese, but also included her giving me lessons in Chinese Calligraphy lessons which started at the age of 5. Within the ritual of writing the same character over and over hundreds of times, I found a sense of rebellion to take these characters and reinvent them with an extra flick of the brush in the wrong direction and being a little over the top with performative gestures. This memory and experience continues to heavily influence my current creative process – taking characters and severing them from their traditional meanings, as an attempt to understand my identity in the Asian diaspora. Combining my training in metal and Chinese calligraphy, my work has not only been an ode to these feelings, but to my own personal history, manifesting as works of dynamic movement and gestures.”
— Gwen Yen Chiu, 2024