JULIE CHEN

The Choice, Julie Chen

I was once a young woman faced with a choice.

Today, I am a mother witnessing young people losing that choice, putting their fates and the fates of those around them in jeopardy. After the overturn of Roe v. Wade, I posted my story on social media the next day. I processed it further into this silent text-based video.

My mother was a very talkative one. She overflowed with memories. When I was no older than five, she would tell me the story about the handsome young man that stole her heart and how happy she was back in those days in Burma (Myanmar). It didn’t phase her that she repeatedly told me this story about a man who wasn’t my father. But in her voice was such yearning and emotion. She was the queen of story-telling, chatter, non-sequitur, and had no filter for what came out of her mouth. This is who I got it from.

Her stories put me in the place of her experience. Stories/narratives in all forms put me in the place of that experience. Narratives support empathy. Empathy is needed more than ever, as the human population on this planet grows and tensions along with it. Presenting narratives in spectacle and shared experience creates a visceral experience for empathy to flow. This is the basis of my art making.

As an interdisciplinary artist, I am looking at intersections of memory, mortality, and place. I process deeply personal memories and historical events. With these narratives at the core, I build my projects in both physical and digital media, often combining typographic, cinematic, architectonic, or naturalist aesthetics. These take shape in a range of works; from large atrium-sized spectacles to small objects of wonder.

@busyjulie