Tianyu Chen

Can you tell us more about your early inspiration from magazines at newspaper stands, and how those first impressions continue to influence your work today?

As a child, I often lingered at newspaper stands, flipping through magazines. My favorite was Children’s Literature, which featured illustrations from artists around the world: a piano flying across the sky, a colorful owl, a girl speaking with a whale. The images were vivid and delicate, each of them carried me into another world. I remember seeing a tiny house at the edge of the sky and wondering if fairies might live there.

Those pictures felt magical, as if the stories were truly happening somewhere. These early encounters shaped how I see images today. An image is never merely an image; every color, every stroke carries emotion, and stories quietly unfold within them.

Tianyu Chen | The Crack | 2023

How has your experience of studying in Taiwan and now in London shaped your artistic identity?

They shaped how I observe and create. My time in Taiwan was a journey of inward exploration. It was a quiet and tender process that taught me to be honest with myself and with my artwork. My tutor often said: “Don’t make the work I like, make the work you like.” At first it just sounded like a simple piece of advice, but it took root in my heart and quietly grew. I stopped chasing approval from others and instead sat with myself, listening more carefully, sensing emotions and even the subtlest shifts of the body. Those sensory experiences became the core of my artistic practice. They still guide how I translate perception into visuals today.

In London, my practice opened outward. I began asking what is happening in the world around me. In my recent projects on belonging and displacement, conversations with people of different regions and generations became an important part of the process. Their stories made me reflect on the multiple interpretations of identity and home. This also became a question of visual storytelling: how can visuals create space for connection, and how can they invite viewers into a dialogue where senses and emotions intertwine? This intersection between inner perception and collective conversation has come to define the approach of my practice.

What role do cross-cultural experiences and migration play in your practice?

At first, cross-cultural experiences felt confusing, almost overwhelming. Moving between places meant being surrounded by new environments and unfamiliar ways of thinking. I felt I had to quickly find answers, a clear destination, a fixed idea of who I was or where I belonged. It was like carrying the pressure of defining myself all the time.

As I engaged in deeper conversations with myself and opened fully to sensing the world around me, that urgency began to dissolve. I stopped looking for one final answer, one destination, and instead began to focus on the process itself—the in-between spaces, the drifting moments. The “destination” is not the only goal. Migration and cross-cultural experience taught me to embrace this openness; each creative practice does not have to be a perfectly concluded entity, but rather a process that continually opens new perceptions. They can be an ongoing journey, holding processes, fragments, and uncertainties.

Tianyu Chen | The Crack | 2023

“The Crack” draws inspiration from higher-dimensional geometry. How did you translate such abstract scientific ideas into visual forms?

For me, geometry and science were never just formulas. They felt like hidden worlds. When I first encountered superstring theory and models like the Calabi–Yau manifold, I was fascinated by the idea that entire dimensions could be folded within our universe, invisible yet present. In superstring theory, these manifolds are described as compact, multi-layered spaces where time and space can bend, collapse, or extend in unpredictable ways.

In my work, I deformed geometric forms, letting the interwoven rhythms of images become a medium to visualize these abstract concepts. The forms suggest space and time that stretch, fold, and overlap. What I tried to capture was not a literal explanation of science, but the experience of exploring higher dimensions: the instability, the wonder, and even the disorientation it brings.

Tianyu Chen | The Crack | 2023

Why did you choose the silkworm and cocoon metaphor to explore humanity’s search for higher dimensions?

A silkworm spends most of its life enclosed, unaware of the world outside. In many ways, this mirrors how human beings experience our own dimension. We faintly sense a greater realm beyond us, yet remain confined by the boundaries we live within. The moment of breaking free and becoming a butterfly is a symbol of reaching higher dimensions. The silkworm not only sheds the cocoon, but also transforms its very form, along with how it moves and perceives the world.

This metaphor became central to The Crack. I wanted to convey that even though we are trapped in our own dimension, the desire to explore always drives us to push beyond those limits, just as the silkworm becomes a butterfly and flies into a wider world.

Tianyu Chen | The Crack | 2023

Could you describe the creative process of making the cubic storytelling book? How do structure and format affect narrative in your work?

I wanted viewers to feel that they were opening a new space each time they encountered the work. The cube allowed me to create this experience in a physical way. The act of unfolding becomes a part of the story itself.

Using 3D software, I folded and arranged images so that each cubic space became an independent dimension. The structure itself became a metaphor for multi-dimensional space: layered, folded, intersecting. It invites viewers to follow the silkworm’s path, wandering through corners and edges of the cube, gathering fragments of the story as their gaze moves.

Tianyu Chen | The Crack | 2023

Your scroll painting is twenty meters long. What challenges and possibilities did working at this scale bring?

Creating a twenty-metre scroll was both exhausting and exhilarating. The scale itself was a challenge. I could never see the whole work at once, so I had to trust the rhythm of my hand and body as I moved along the paper. The process felt almost like a performance, with my entire body engaged in drawing continuous lines and shifting forms, resonating with them.

At the same time, the scale opened new possibilities for viewing. A scroll inherently carries movement. The viewer has to walk with it, unfolding it slowly, letting time become part of the experience. I wanted to echo the journey deeper into the universe: continuous, never fixed, always flowing forward. Through color and line, I hoped to let viewers feel the rhythm of the cosmos.