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Everything is Zero Calorie: Watercolors by Yen Yen

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.

Yen Yen - Secret Talk watercolor
Secret Talk
Yen Yen - Rainbow Stacks watercolor
Rainbow Stacks
Yen Yen - More Than Just a Slice of Cake - watercolor
More Than Just a Slice of Cake
Yen Yen - Dripping Face watercolor
Dripping Face
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Yen Yen

Yen Yen (b. 1992, Taipei, Taiwan) is a Brooklyn-based artist. Last year, she graduated from Pratt Institute with an M.F.A. in Painting and Drawing after receiving her Bachelor’s in Education from the University of Taipei.

Yen Yen has participated in a number of group exhibitions at spaces including The Hole Gallery, New York, NY; Visual AIDS, New York, NY; Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Brooklyn, NY; Prince Street Gallery, New York, NY; Space 776 Gallery, Brooklyn, NY ; and The Cluster Gallery, Brooklyn, NY. She has been a resident artist at Chinatown Soup Studio since early 2019. Visit yenyenchou.com and Instagram @yenyenflamingoo.

Author: Yen Yen Category: Visual Art and Visual Poetry December 27, 2019

Comments

  1. JD says

    January 1, 2020 at 3:22 pm

    I like the way Yen Yen creates a sense of visual hunger. For me, her soft pastel colors reminded me of happy places — food, toys, colors in a box, things I’ve seen in the natural world such as various rock formations in Utah and Arizona. Yen Yen’s work is playful yet serious. I want these images stamped in my brain. Delightful, almost edilble.

    Reply
    • Yen Yen says

      January 4, 2020 at 10:08 am

      Hello JD,

      Thank you so much for your kind words, I really appreciate it. :)

      Reply
      • JD says

        January 4, 2020 at 3:00 pm

        You are most welcome! I want to follow you.

        Reply
        • Yen Yen says

          January 9, 2020 at 8:31 am

          Hi JD,

          Please feel free to follow me on Instagram @yenyenflamingoo or email me via [email protected] and I can put you in my mailing list. Thank you! :)

          Reply

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Established in 2000 and edited by Denise Enck, Empty Mirror is an online literary magazine that publishes new work each Friday.

Each week EM features several poems each by one or two poets; reviews; critical essays; visual art; and personal essays.

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