Current Exhibition

Jaeyoun Shin (b.1987)
Breathin I-IV (2024)
Colour Pencils and Silver Pen on Black Paper
21cm x 29.7cm
$550AUD (each)



 Find Out More About This Work



Contact Us
About Us
Join our Newsletter
CINDY YUEN-ZHE CHEN
Kebaya - 廣寧 Guangning (2024)
Chinese ink on Wenzhou paper with cotton lining
94cm x 61cm x 21cm





Ah Po (my maternal grandmother) lived between cultures, negotiating her Chinese heritage with the multifaceted identities that were emerging under British rule in Penang, Britain’s first colony in Southeast Asia. Born to Chinese migrants during the British Straits Settlements period, Ah Po wore Peranakan Nyonya kebaya blouses and sarongs as a marker of solidarity with local Peranakan (combined Chinese and Malay) culture and communities. Her cultural dress and identity was fluid, segueing between Chinese and Peranakan; her most modern kebaya incorporates the Chinese pankou knot in a further blending of cultures. The drawings and paper garment in this exhibition honour my grandmother’s transcultural legacy; they draw connections to the landscape of our ancestral homeland of 廣寧 Guangning in China through compositions that recall Chinese landscape painting, marks derived from satellite views of this place, and a methodology that integrates traditional East Asian brush and ink mediums with Western drawing techniques.

As an early-career artist working between drawing, listening and sound, I am investigating trajectories of cultural exchange and transformation that have occurred through intergenerational migration, trade and colonisation in Southeast Asia, specifically in Malaysia where I was born. Fleeing poverty and civil war in China, my Hakka and Cantonese Chinese ancestors migrated to Penang and Perak in Malaysia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The significance of Penang as a locus of communication, exchange and trade can be be seen in the Peranakan communities and their blending of Malay and Chinese culture in textiles, food, art and language. The cut and embroidery of the kebaya and floral patterns of batik sarongs reveal European and Chinese influences which articulate centuries of intercultural exchange that were facilitated by centuries of trade and Dutch and British colonisation; from these interactions emerged hybrid textile designs and complex cultural identities. Although she was of Chinese heritage, my grandmother wore Southeast Asian kebaya blouses and sarongs interchangeably with the Chinese cheongsam as way to connect with the countries of both her birth and ancestry. Her approach demonstrates how Southeast Asian Chinese diasporic identity is a fluid, generative and intentional process; and I am reminded of how my own cultural identity has gained a new layer of complexity and richness from our migration to Australia.

Accompanying the artwork in the A.SINGLE.PIECE gallery are a new body of work dealing with these themes titled “Kebaya - Articulating Trajectories“


Dr Cindy Yuen-Zhe Chen

Dr Cindy Yuen-Zhe Chen lives and works in unceded Wallumedegal, Darug and Gadigal Countries in Sydney, Australia. Her practice examines how embodied listening and sounding can extend experimental drawing as a multi-sensory, emplaced process. Through interactions with the surfaces, people and atmospheric contingencies of places, Chen develops drawing, listening and sounding as interconnected practices that engender connections and enact distinct senses of places. As the recipient of the University Postgraduate Award, Chen completed a Doctor of Philosophy in Art, Design and Media at the University of New South Wales Art and Design. Chen has presented her research internationally in England and China.

Chen was a finalist for the NSW Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship 2021-2022 and was a resident studio artist at Parramatta Artist Studios 2020-2023 (Parramatta and Epping). With work held in private and public collections, Chen has exhibited in Australia and China in solo, group and finalist prize exhibitions. Chen was commissioned by 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art to produce a solo exhibition at the Australian National Maritime Museum in 2022. In December 2018, Chen held a solo exhibition and undertook an artist residency at Ningbo Museum of Art, China. In 2017, Chen was selected to exhibit in Beijing's Today Art Museum as a part of Art Nova 100, an exhibition of the top one hundred global Chinese artists under the age of thirty. She was a finalist in the Paddington Art Prize in 2015 and a finalist for the 61st Blake Prize in 2012. Chen has undertaken artist residencies at Akiyoshidai International Art Village in Japan and Hill End, Bathurst Regional Gallery. 
.