Alison Chen

Alison Chen (she/her b. 1986, New York City) is a visual artist working in photography, video, performance, and photography. Her work addresses the complexities and confusions that surround our most intimate relationships, and the areas where our preconceived notions fall short. She received her M.F.A. from Parsons School of Design and her B.F.A from Cornell University. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at spaces including the Torrance Art Museum (Torrance, CA), Collarworks (Troy, NY), the CUE Art Foundation (New York, NY), and Standard Space (Sharon, CT). Her practice has been recognized by fellowships and residencies at the Wassaic Project and Kala Art Institute and she has had the honor to study under the direction of Magnum photographer, Antoine D’Agata . Her work has also been featured in the Society for Photographic Education Film Festival, the Beijing Design Festival, the Pingyao International Photography Festival, and the Dali International Photo Festival. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.

I am interested in the complex nature of our closest relationships. Through video, performance, photography, and text, I explore the complexities and confusions that surround intimacy, the dynamics of vulnerability, and the areas where our preconceived notions fall short. More specifically, my ongoing long-term project approaches motherhood from within this framework. I explore my conception of motherhood and how it is shaped by my experiences as a daughter, my relationship with my mother, and the lineage of mothers throughout the generations.

Spun out of generations of stories, photographs, folklore, trauma, experiences, the images mix my personal encounters as a mother together with the influences of my experience as a daughter, and my relationship to my ancestor mothers within my lineage. I am interested in how the term “mother” is constructed and understood, and how this identity is broken up, shattered, erased, and reconfigured.

Interspersed, arranged, overlapped, are a myriad of images touching on the impermanence of life, the blurring of bodies, and the historical touchstones that ground my experience as a mother. Through crafting moments of my experiences for the camera and restaging and reinterpreting archival footage, I aim to link generations together and create a circuitous slowing down of time.