Jie Chen

Year of birth: 2001.
Where do you live: China, Zhejiang Province.
Your education: Parsons School of Design, Bachelor of Fine Arts, Fashion Design Major.
Describe your art in three words: Fantasy, Storytelling, Black-humor.
Your discipline: illustration, (3D) fashion design, storyteller, book making, animation.
Website | Instagram

Your journey in art began at a very young age. Can you tell us about the first time you felt inspired to create something, and how that initial spark evolved into your multidisciplinary practice today?

The first time I felt inspired to create was in third grade, influenced by the Japanese anime Cardcaptor Sakura. Seeing the characters illustrated with pretty faces and unique outfits in each episode left a lasting impression on me. I began imitating the anime style and designing fashion looks for the characters I created. Before long, my classmates noticed my sketches and started sharing them, which gave me some popularity and truly sparked my passion for fashion design. Around the same time, I was inspired by the Flash Player video game Mole Manor, a dress-up and adventure game where players could change clothes, complete missions, and make friends. This inspired me to create my own version in my sketchbook. I designed maps, user interfaces, and characters for the game and invited my classmates to join. I created unique avatars for each of them and introduced a token system they could use to “purchase” fashion designs from my virtual clothing stores for their avatars.

This experience became my first multidisciplinary project, combining illustration, fashion, and interactive game design. It made me realize how much I enjoy blending different creative disciplines to make art and design fun, interactive, and engaging.

How has your experience of moving to Canada at 15 and later studying at Parsons School of Design influenced your artistic vision and storytelling?

In Canada, the supportive educational environment allowed me to fully immerse myself in art and explore my creativity. I experimented with various mediums—acrylic painting, collage, and pastels—drawing inspiration from both teachers and renowned artists during museum visits. These experiences ignited my imagination and deepened my commitment to art.

My storytelling journey began in my final year in Canada with a series of themed paintings for my AP Art Drawing class. I learned how a single frame, through its composition, character-object interactions, and use of color, could spark the audience’s imagination and invite personal interpretations. This series earned me top scores on the AP assessment and inspired my ambition to develop a unique artistic language for storytelling across multiple mediums.

At Parsons, where I majored in fashion design, I expanded my storytelling to fashion, exploring new forms of media. Exposure to diverse electives and working studios, equipped with various tools and techniques, broadened my creative vision, enabling me to merge different art forms to enhance the narrative. The resources available at both schools gave me the freedom to experiment and push my artistic boundaries.

Jie Chen | Chapter9 neogenesis-ten candles counting down

Your work often explores dualities like life and death, chaos and order. What draws you to these opposing forces, and how do you balance them in your art?

I am an eclectic individual, deeply intrigued by the duality and polarity inherent in everything. As humans, we often exist in the space between opposing forces—a “grey area” that sparks my curiosity. It is in this tension, the interplay of black and white, that I find profound intrigue. Though these extremes may be theoretical or abstract, I am captivated by their pure, outside-of-reality nature. I believe exploring these extremes, both in narrative and concept, pushes the boundaries of understanding and opens up new perspectives and ways of thinking.

In my creative process, my goal is not to simply balance opposing forces, nor to choose one side over the other, but to embrace their interconnectedness. As I explore these contrasts, I allow the narrative or concept to evolve by moving away from one extreme, only to eventually return to its opposite. This cyclical return reflects the philosophy of Yin and Yang—the idea that opposing forces are not in conflict, but are interdependent and complementary. Through this approach, I aim to reveal how the tension between extremes can uncover a deeper, more dynamic truth.

Your series NEO·GENESIS is a deeply personal reinterpretation of the universe’s origin. Could you walk us through the process of creating this series, from concept to execution?

Before creating this project, I delved into a wide array of theories about the origin of the universe, exploring scientific hypotheses, philosophical ideologies, historical studies, and even extraterrestrial concepts. My curiosity led me to study the Bible for nearly a year at a local church, all in pursuit of answers to the ultimate question of the universe’s creation. As an eclectic person, I often find that no single hypothesis fully resonates with me, which inspired me to blend diverse perspectives into a unique genesis story—one that feels both authentic and personally meaningful.

The entire story came together in just an hour, late at night, in my sketchbook. Emerging from my subconscious, it was shaped by all the ideas I had absorbed. Like assembling a Lego structure, I pieced together elements of varying shapes and forms to build my own Tower of Babel—a genesis story that is uniquely mine.

Throughout the conceptual process, I drew inspiration from Norse mythology, where the universe originates from the clash between ice and fire. To explore the emergence of key concepts such as time and space, I deviated from the Biblical creation narrative in which God creates space and illuminates the universe. Instead, I introduced an inhuman creature—the god beast—imbued with the ability to transcend time and space. This creature runs at incredible speeds, shaping the universe as it moves. The space it traverses becomes the map and boundaries of existence, while the sparks of light it creates regulate universal time, establishing the speed of light as the fundamental force.

For human creation, I explored the duality of human nature—flesh and spirit—and how they are created through different processes. The randomness and complexity inherent in human nature is reflected in the spirit, which is drawn from a vast, divine spirit complex. Each fragment of this complex carries varying proportions of good and evil, cold and passion, reason and instinct. This combination makes each spirit unique in its personality and nature. The flesh’s randomness is granted through the spirit’s journey of self-exploration, as it discovers its talents and forms within the framework of time, symbolized by the ten burning candles. These candles represent the ten months of pregnancy, with the energy of the Tree of Life (symbolizing maternal nourishment) sustaining the process. During this period, the spirit freely explores and collects its abilities in the dark chambers, discovering its appearance in a magical mirror.

When the spirit and flesh unite, they form the human body, illustrating the complex fusion of contrasting forces that define humanity. The entire genesis story is actually rooted in basic cognitive references, with metaphor narrative and replacement as execution.

Jie Chen | Chapter 8 neogenesis-magic mirror

The god beast in NEO·GENESIS is a central figure in your narrative. How did you conceptualize its design, and what does it symbolize to you personally?

In the initial design of the god beast, I wanted to fuse the elements of ice and fire, inspired by the duality found in Norse mythology. These opposing forces would be embodied within the creature, forming a double-natured core. This core was visualized as a heart divided into two halves: one side cold and icy, the other fiery and intense. The ice could represent the pure blue skies of heaven, while the fire evokes the chaotic, destructive flames of hell. However, the duality extends beyond these literal interpretations, symbolizing the extremes of human nature—good vs. evil, cold vs. passionate, reason vs. instinct, and so on.

As I developed the first tangible form of the creature, I drew a connection to the goat, an animal often used in sacrificial offerings to God in Christian tradition. By incorporating the goat as a prototype, I sought to imbue the beast with a sense of divine significance. The goat, in this context, serves as a symbol of spiritual sacrifice and the idea of a return offering—a gift from beyond our universe, embodying the beast’s intricate, sacred nature and profound mystique.

The creation of this figure stems from my ambivalence about the existence of a higher power. I wrestle with the idea of a deliberate, omnipotent creator versus the possibility that the universe emerged through random, calculable events, akin to Laplace’s Demon. This god beast embodies a synthesis of these ideas—a divine figure that deviates from the traditional notion of God. While possessing the ability to create, it does so without intent, shaping the universe through accidental, random occurrences.

In your work, storytelling is foundational. How do your visual narratives influence your fashion designs, particularly your unisex garments blending glamour and utilitarianism?

To preserve the narrative essence in my fashion design practice, I break down my stories and illustrations into chapters, with each chapter inspiring a complete look. Each look conveys the essence of its chapter, seamlessly integrating storytelling into the design process.

Unisex garments are a core principle of my approach, rooted in the belief that clothing styles should transcend traditional gender distinctions. I aim to break free from the conventions of women’s and men’s wear, focusing instead on universal design. By incorporating metaphor into my illustrations and visualizing narratives graphically, I streamline the research process. While other designers might create mood boards from external images, my illustrations serve this purpose directly, providing a foundation for silhouettes and garment forms.

When storytelling elements—such as fire or mythical beasts—anchor the narrative, I translate these motifs into the design features and silhouettes of the garments. To push the boundaries of structure and functionality, I’ve incorporated 3D pop-up book mechanisms developed during my NEO·GENESIS project, where I created a 3D pop-up book of my illustrations. These mechanisms have enriched my creative process, inspiring designs that fuse pop-up techniques with garment patterns to achieve a dynamic blend of utilitarian functionality and high-fashion glamour.

The pop-up concept reflects the explosive nature of universe creation, embodying the narrative’s theme of cosmic expansion. It unites form and concept, with a single page transforming into unexpected dimensions—mirroring the dramatic clash of ice and fire that gives rise to the universe and humanity.

Jie Chen | Chapter2 neogenesis-time and space

You integrate 3D technology into your fashion creations. How do you think technology is reshaping the future of art and design, especially in the context of sustainability?

I think the act of creation is both exhilarating and challenging because it inherently consumes resources, which can sometimes feel limiting. There’s always that concern about wasting materials, especially when working on experimental art or fashion pieces. Many of these creations, while conceptually exciting, often lack functionality and end up as “art trash” once their purpose is served. This thought can be disheartening and sometimes holds back the freedom to push boundaries.

That’s where I feel 3D technology becomes a game-changer. It’s incredible to think about how this digital tool allows designers like me to bring wild, conceptual ideas to life without worrying about material waste. With real-time simulation, I can see how a design might move, how shapes might interact, and even test out bold concepts that might have felt too risky in a traditional medium.

What I love most is how it transforms the prototyping process. Instead of spending time and resources on multiple physical models, I can iterate in a virtual space, tweaking and perfecting as I go. It’s like having an infinite canvas to explore creativity without the guilt of excess or waste. For me, 3D technology doesn’t just ease the technical process; it gives me the freedom to think bigger, push boundaries, and focus on innovation without compromising sustainability.