Xiaowei Chen is an artist whose intricate drawings are intended to arouse curiosity in the viewer. Originally from China, she currently resides in Boston and seeks to create works that “explore the emotional states of human experience through two very different cultures,” according to a statement written by art critic Lingsui. Her art was recently displayed in the Pellas Gallery’s exhibition “Utopia X Dystopia.” In this particular show, she was highly influenced by Greek philosophers and ancient stories.
“I love ink on paper,” said Chen. “I am very minimalist and want to use a language of simplicity to express my feelings. My background is as a director of documentary film. I like to make an evolving kind of story, presented in my art, and let the viewer, the audience, make a choice of what this really means. I always like to tell a story through my art.”
Chen had formal training in art, but it did not involve studies of the “old masters of the Western tradition,” except for what she learned through Soviet-era methods that were popularly taught in the 1990s in China. Still, she cites Rubens and Da Vinci as inspirations that she has tried to decipher. She graduated from the Institute of Graphic Communication in Beijing. Her drawings exhibit mastery of the human form and anatomy, the result of decades of practice, according to Lingsui.
In “Utopia X Dystopia,” Chen has a piece called “Reinterpretation of the Death of Socrates,” a work of ink and colored pencil on paper. The image is split into two panels, where on the top side a human form is depicted, his face covered and concealed from sight. This figure represents the philosopher Socrates, and he is positioned alongside a crowd of hundreds of people. Socrates had violated the rules of the current government, and his fate is to either drink a glass of poisoned wine or to live without being able to give his opinion in public anymore. In the bottom half of the piece, there is a nature scene that resembles a tornado. A tornado may leave a place, but its name will be remembered forever, said Chen, much like the thinker Socrates. While Chen draws from ancient stories, as an artist, she sees history as being something that is very subjective.
“In my point of view, as we look at history, we’re not so sure how the history develops. It’s different from what we learn from books,” said Chen. “Because history is something that we’ve heard. It’s only part of the scenario; that’s all we know. Some of it, we are able to read or see, but some of it, we will never know.”
In the piece “Dionysus Chose to Remain Silent,” there is a background panel that shows floral imagery, with blank word boxes. As these are juxtaposed with the forms of nude figures, the viewer is invited to question, what would these people be saying if they had words? A spectator could engage with this piece by filling in the words for themselves, while Lingsui suggests that maybe the figures, who are drinking at a feast, are saying things that may not be important. In this way, Chen creates puzzles in her artwork that play with the viewer’s sense of curiosity.
Before Chen became a professional artist, she had worked for television productions as an art director, and as a director for documentary films. While making documentaries, she often carried with her the sense that these movies were meant to present facts without providing a clear conclusion or ending. Chen came to the United States from China when she won an award from an arts foundation in New York. They invited her to come work on visual art in New York, kicking off her professional career as an artist. From there, she went on to show work in Japan, Korea, and China.
According to Chen, the exchange between an art piece and its viewers is an important process for her. An artist creates a work, but it is up to the spectator to have their own experience and interpret it for his or herself. The way that we look at art should be similar to the way that we think of history.
“Artists … are like priests who preach certain beliefs to [their] disciples, but sermons are mere experiments in our time of dualities,” writes Lingsui. “No one should take them too seriously, [the] same applies to taught history.”
