Xiao CHEN is a multimedia artist who works and lives in France. After completing her education in art in both China and in France, she joined the AFEDAP in 2014 in order to learn the techniques of jewelry craftsmanship. As a artist, her aim is to break down the walls of the white cube, merging contemporary displayed art and wearable art in order to bring her art into the everyday life of her audience. 

In 2016, during her time at the Ecole Nationale Superieure d’Art (ENSA) in Limoges, France, she developed a protocol which would allow for the symbiotic exchange between wearable objects and different media (video, audio, etc.), creating hybrid pieces that could carry stories in new ways. 

After graduating with a masters degree in art from the ENSA Limoges in 2018, Chen was selected by the galerie Marzee for its International Graduate Show. This was the culmination of several shows she has participated in since 2018, including Carrousel du Louvre (Paris, 2016), Pop a Cieux (Cieux, 2017), Exposition Souterraine (La Souterraine, 2018), Parcours Bijoux (Paris, 2017 ), Entre du jeu (Paris, 2020), l’Envers du corps in France (Paris, 2020), and Bijou is a Risky Business (Munich, 2019). In 2021, she is expanding her multinational reach even farther, participating in three shows: Intimate Relationships (Shanghai and Beijing), Meditating Through Jewelry (New York), and One Game (Graz). 

Chen’s works explore the ambiguities and contradictions that are inherent in the materials artists work with, and in the objects we all use every day. She often creates pieces using banal materials, yet her pieces are deceptively simple, often inspired by the metaphors and stories that shaped her worldview in early childhood. The point is not to create beautiful work, but to create intelligent work, which invites us to think and to feel in new ways about our memories, about the stories we tell ourselves, and about the flawed concepts of beauty and perfection themselves. 

– by Miranda Hoegberg