OCAD U CAREER LAUNCHERS

Artist Project 2019

OPPORTUNITY DESCRIPTION

The Artist Project Contemporary Art Fair and The Centre for Emerging Artists and Designers are excited to announce Yuling Chen as the 2019 Recipient of the Artist Project Career Launcher.

Yuling receives a $2,000 grant from the CEAD toward the production of project Video:Game for the 12th annual Artist Project Contemporary Art Fair; held at the Better Living Centre, February 21 to 24, 2019. 

Video: Game

Gestures and movements are the foundation of my practice. I often devise a repetitive gesture or a movement plan in my performance to reveal the minutiae of reality and uncertainties of our identities. Migration between borders (for instance, the one between China and Canada) upsets your sense of security: you no longer know where you firmly belong. As you land at an airport or go through customs at the border, you notice you are being watched. You are conscious of the eyes that surveil your body, your nationality, your belongings. “Am I all right for them?” you ask yourself, raising your head among the crowd, controlling the muscles on your face to look unthreatening, normal, controlled. This project involves performing technologies, breaking down the elements of a video game into watching and being watched. You volunteer your body to be watched while simultaneously playing with the rules of surveillance technology.

Chinese artist Yuling Chen is currently completing her undergraduate thesis at OCAD University in Toronto, Canada. Chen is an interdisciplinary artist with a focus on technology, architecture and live performance. She creates work at the intersection of installation and performance, in which the constructs of spatial and technological elements become integral to her performance. She appropriates narratives and games from her early childhood into her performances. The movements within the performances are often constrained and directed; they relate to surveillance, self-perception and migration.