Artist frames imagination
Fantasy and personal expression combine for a unique approach, Li Yingxue reports.
"The characters in this series are all teenagers around 13 or 14," Chen says. "That's an age I just came through myself — so it's natural for me to understand and design their emotions and expressions."
Chen's visual language — detailed, strange, and often slightly grotesque — draws from the aesthetics of Japanese manga, French experimental cinema, and her emotional memory. Her work explores recurring themes: identity, embodiment, time and transformation.
"I don't want to define my style with a label," she says. "An artist's work should be fluid. It's that sense of change and movement that allows real innovation to happen."
Chen is part of a rising generation of Chinese artists redefining post-internet visual culture, blending East Asian pop aesthetics with personal mythology and speculative futures.
