Everything is Zero Calorie: Watercolors by Yen Yen

My work is an imaginary world that starts from my obsession with food, especially sweets. Growing up in Taiwan, I remember going to supermarkets and bakeries with my parents and longing for all the colorful and eye-catching sweets and buttery pastries. I find it curious that even they don’t always taste as good as they look, I still desire for them. As a response to this emotional conflict, I make drawings, paintings, and sculptures to explore the ideas of obsession, sensation, and the relationship between natural and artificial.

Besides the obsession of sweets, clouds, mushrooms, and raindrops have also been recurring subjects in my work. Like the sweets, their round and curvy contours have always given me a sense of freedom that they can become anything. On the other hand, their presences are like human lives – temporary and ever-changing. Through anthropomorphizing these motifs or turning them into different things with my imagination, I hope to remember these fleeting moments in life, whether they are sweet or bitter; clear or ambiguous.