About the Artist
Gwen Yen Chiu is a Chicago based Taiwanese-American artist. Born in the United States, 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.
“I started getting lessons from my mother in Chinese Calligraphy when I was 5. Within the ritual of writing the same character over and over hundreds of times, I found myself taking traditional chinese characters and reinventing them with an extra flick of the brush in the wrong direction and being a little over the top with performative gestures. This memory of rebellion continues to heavily influence my current creative process – taking characters and severing them from their traditional meanings - into three-dimentional metal sculptures, manifesting as works of dynamic movement and gestures.”
— Gwen Yen Chiu, 2024
