CHEN Vera｜Cité Internationale des Arts - Arts Residency Network Taiwan 藝術進駐網

Location	France / Paris
Residency	Cité Internationale des Arts
Year of the Grant	2011
Personal Website	CHEN Vera's Personal Website

CHEN Vera, M.F.A in Contemporary Performing Arts in Brunel University, with the emphasis of solo acting and creating. She is a director, an actress and a teacher. Her works focus on the reaction and interaction of individuals facing the publics. She tries to enlighten the audience by the pictorial and narrative story with the enlargement of normal behaviors and customs in our daily life. Based on the form theater, she interlinks the movie, multimedia interaction and spatial creation.

She is currently the art director of the Multi-X Theater company. In 2019 and 2020, Chen has been nominated for Best New Director and Best Supporting Actress of Golden Horse Award.

Artist Statement:

What was most significant about my time in Paris was how life experiences directly affected both my work and my thinking. The pace of life in France was so different from that of Taiwan that an artist could re-evaluate oneself in many unfamiliarities and reorganize one’s own practice.

As one of the key cultural centers in Europe, Paris is a city that showcases a variety of performance arts. As a result, I was able to learn from many exceptional international performances. This not only generated new ideas and integrated me in the global loop, but it also gave me a different perspective. Furthermore, it connected me with the 2012 Avignon Festival, as well as Philippe Gualier, a master of performance art. Sponsorship from the National Culture and Arts Foundation enabled me to later visit him in 2013.

Participating in an artist residency was a process of experimentation. For example, there is usually a limitation on time in formal theater performance art ; whereas this limitation is eliminated when in residency. Artists could make time to have discussions with the audience about works in progress. A simple working method could become increasingly more elaborate and meaningful through various residency programs. I became interested in the audience’s reaction and condition in public spaces throughout Paris. I attempted to let go of my usual working model and return to the simplicity of performance in existing spaces. Complexity was made simple and exploration of the condition between people and spaces became apparent. I later continued this mode of working during my residency at Treasure Hill Artist Village (Taipei, Taiwan). Using environmental theater, I took my audience to different corners inside Treasure Hill and allowed them to imagine the stories of the space and the characters. In the future, I expect to apply a similar artistic process in new works, with many more interesting performance artists, and in different spaces.

Interacting and collaborating with international artists had been an important part of my experiences during the residency. I collaborated and performed with a few French actors in my final residency presentation and was invited to participate in the Dimanche Rough Event, a contemporary performance event in Paris that happens once a month. In addition, the piece was invited to be performed at the opening for the Immaterial Project exhibitions, in interdisciplinary collaboration with a Swiss sound artist Lukas Modular. I was also able to join forces with other artists at Cité International des Arts to organize open studio events and activities together.