Rachel Hansen in Conversation with Susan Chen
Susan Chen in her temporary studio in Massachusetts (2020).
Susan Chen is a first-generation American immigrant. Noticing a lack of Asian/Asian-American representation in Western art institutions, Susan’s work raises the question of visibility. Who is remembered and represented in history, and who is erased or forgotten? Inspired by Asian-American social media groups, Susan often paints portraits of sitters she meets through the web. Susan strongly believes that figurative painting has the ability to empower, especially those who receive such little attention in everyday media. Through her work she hopes to honour members of her community and include them in a greater social discussion.
Susan’s debut solo exhibition, entitled On Longing, was held this past August at Meredith Rosen Gallery in New York City. The show featured two bodies of work, one in which the artist painted portraits of sitters from said social media groups and the other created in response to the Covid-19 crisis and her quarantine experience. The exhibition was well-received by critics at The New York Times, Hyperallergic, Artsy and Artnet, among others.
I, Rachel Hansen, had the pleasure of sitting down with Susan (over Zoom) to discuss assimilation and its relationship to identity, her artistic development into portraiture and her transcendence from the classroom to the art market in a unique time.
Rachel Hansen: Growing up you navigated two worlds, one in which you lived in a small apartment in Hong Kong and the other in which you attended an all-girls boarding school in the UK. How did this duality of lifestyle affect your sense of identity in those formative years, and your work today?
Susan Chen: Hong Kong was a British colony until 1997, so there were a lot of ties for kids to go to school in the UK on scholarships and things like that. When I was in school, an all-girls school that is, I think there were three of us in my whole year who weren’t Caucasian, so in that sense it was like going into extreme assimilation right away from an early age. I didn’t know what these terms or feelings [I now paint about] were when I was younger. I remember being in the dining room and picking up my bowl to drink soup, because that was what we did at home, and being sent out of the dining room and given detention. I think people are way more culturally sensitive now than 10-15 years ago.
How does that affect my work? Landscape [painting] felt a bit like escapism. To me, it felt like Alice in Wonderland or James and the Giant Peach or The Chronicles of Narnia, where these kids go on adventures in their backyards or imaginary spaces, and where they end up is right where they started, they just have a different perspective. This idea of traveling in between two totally different worlds creates this sense of permanent longing and I think that’s what the landscape is, in a way. But, when I started my MFA at Columbia University, I had hit sort of a dead end with my landscapes. I don’t want to say I got bored, but I [started to think] ‘okay, I’m at an MFA program… this is a chance to do something really hard.’ Portraiture was the total opposite because there’s a human being in front of you. The landscape is so much about running away whereas with portraiture you can’t do that because the person is right there, so you kind of have to run towards them.
Missed Call, oil and flashe on canvas, 40 x 30 in. (2018).
So that’s how I fell into portraiture. I first started painting about sisterhood – me and my sister – but I became too obsessed with wanting her to look just like her. People were like, ‘that’s such a high-pressure way of entering portraiture,’ by painting someone like a family member. So, then I thought ‘okay maybe I’ll just paint a stranger.’ At the same time, I got really fascinated by this Facebook group called Subtle Asian Traits. It’s a group with all these Asian millennials who live in English-speaking countries across the world who have come together to bond over things like this sense of displacement, wanting to belong, intergenerational conflicts between Asian kids and their parents who have different viewpoints and interracial dating and the sensitivities around that. It wasn’t a Facebook group of like 1000 people, it has 1.8 million people, so it’s a real thing. From there, I started finding strangers, and from strangers I started finding Asian community social media groups. Painting sort of led me from one thing to the next. I’m a big believer that painting always tells the truth, the subconscious truth.
Yang Gang, oil on canvas, 76 x 96 in. (2020).
RH: How did you let go of that need to paint realistic portraits and embrace the expressionistic style you use today?
SC: I feel like I haven’t. There are definitely restrictions when you’re painting real human beings. I think for me, I struggle with caring too much about what the sitter thinks. I want to honor the sitter, but it’s not about them, it’s about the painting. At the same time, it is about them because I’m painting about visibility, so I hope one day I find a happy in-between. Maybe the answer is just to not search for approval all the time.
RH: One of the key elements of studio class is ‘crit’ (critique), where approval is sometimes hard to come by. Have you received harsh criticism and how do you channel it?
SC: It’s funny you say that, you always hear stories about schools where they give you a really hard time. At Columbia, a problem we’ve had is that everyone is so nice. We actually complained about this in our feedback evaluation [laughs]. We were like, ‘we’re not getting real feedback because we’re all so nice to each other.’ Some harsher feedback I’ve gotten is that my work is too “cute.” And I would have to agree! Another is that my colours could be stronger, but that is a technical thing that I think will be solved by more practice and time.
I also think that in the age of identity politics – I’m essentially doing my MFA during Trump’s presidency – it can be difficult for people to give me harsh feedback because my work is about Asian/Asian-American identity. It’s about a population that faces a lot of microaggressions on a daily basis. I think it sucks that people find it difficult to critique subject matters that are sensitive. I think it’s dangerous when artists are self-censoring. I see a lot of that actually, and this question of: who is allowed to paint what? For example, this American painter I know, painted women in hijabs. Right now, if she were to do that, people might give her a hard time thinking she was being culturally insensitive. But, five or ten years ago it wouldn’t have been a conversation. I definitely see self-censorship and people being afraid to paint. Thinking of Dana Schutz when she painted Emmet Till. Even if the truth is bad…artists have to tell the truth.
About Face, oil on canvas, 74 x 54 in. (2020).
RH: Your work sometimes references modern age anxieties and desires, particular to millennials. Take for instance Covid-19 Survival Kit and Streetcars of Desire, respectively. What kind of anxieties and desires do you aim to portray?
One of my favorite studio quotes is from Phillip Guston about ‘studio ghosts:’
“Studio Ghosts: When you're in the studio painting, there are a lot of people in there with you - your teachers, friends, painters from history, critics... and one by one if you're really painting, they walk out. And if you're really painting YOU walk out.” (Philip Guston)
I find this quote really beautiful in that as an artist, you’re working and you’re in constant conversation even if you’re alone the whole time. I made Streetcars of Desire thinking about that. I don’t know if I seek to portray anxiety, but I think millennials in general are a very anxious group because we are enforced and fostered by social media. The population is the largest it’s ever been in history and there’s so much pressure to find your niche and to show it. Like, ‘I am X, this is my brand.’ I think with these paintings, the anxiety also comes from painting a figure in claustrophobic spaces and painting them larger than they would actually fit on a canvas. Also, when sitters come to the studio, they’re not professional sitters, they usually don’t have any experience sitting for a painting. That also causes a little anxiety.
Streetcars of Desires, oil on canvas, 40 x 30 in. (2020).
The other thing I think about is this idea of the inside versus the outside. Our lives related to social media: we’re here but we can also be somewhere else. I like to think about the landscape outside the window as a metaphor too. In some older paintings, I would make a border around the work to show this idea of this ‘I am here, but I could be there’ feeling, and that kind of anxious tension.
Covid-19 Survival Kit, oil on canvas, 40 x 30 in. (2020).
RH: Your work is often clever and witty; is this humour intentional or do you think it is simply a reflection of your own personality?
SC: I think it might be a personality thing. I remember when I was painting Covid-19 Survival Kit (2020), I was like ‘I have to put a Corona beer bottle in there.’ I went to the store and I was like, ‘oh wow, they have Corona and Corona extra!’ [laughs]. I wondered if it was insensitive, but yolo. This other painting, Arnie’s (2020), was a family portrait of us eating seafood. I wondered what I should be holding, but obviously if I were to find anything on the beach it would be a clam with a pearl in it! [laughs]. So, it might be a personality thing. I’m becoming known as the girl who paints sad Asians. I’m like, “look at me! I’m so sad okay” [laughs]. I also noticed that I tend to make my sitters’ faces more rounded than they are, and I think it’s because my face is so round…it just subconsciously happens. I wouldn’t say I’m a funny person though, if you met me, you’d be like ‘she’s stone cold and moody.’
Arnie’s, oil on canvas, 40 x 50 in. (2020).
RH: When you are painting, are you constantly thinking of new directions to take it in and ways to improve your work?
SC: Absolutely. I think a good painting is most exciting when it’s a little bit stressful because it’s hard to make but it’s not so hard that you’re stressed out of your mind. I think with every painting you make you want to push yourself a little bit more. Although, I think once you become involved with the art market and there’s pressure to produce quickly, you can lose that time to be able to grow.
RH: Expanding on your point about participation in the art market, what was your first solo exhibition experience, On Longing, like? The show sold out before it even opened. Did you feel an unprecedented sense of pressure knowing your work would be viewed publicly by critics and other gatekeepers to the art world?
Honestly, I didn’t have any expectations at all. I was being offered a solo show, so I said yes. When someone offers you that in New York City, you don’t say no…you make it happen! I honestly thought, “it’s Covid, no one’s going to come to the show or write about it, but it’s all good it’s my first show!” I had low expectations. It was so much about making the paintings. I was so distracted by all this Covid stuff going on that for me it was just about the work. A lot of artists have experience doing group shows before they go into a solo show, but for me it was different because I hadn’t done many group shows in the city, so the learning curve was really steep. I just remember people coming in to install the show for me, I was like, ‘this is weird…what do I do?’ At the end I expected to pack all the work myself and ship it, but they were like, ‘no, we do this!’ I kept waiting for other artists to show up, but then remembering it’s just me. It was a really helpful learning experience.
Susan Chen in her Columbia University studio, creating Yang Gang (2020).
RH: Did you have a say in the buying process or was the transaction-side completely left up to your gallerist?
SC: I didn’t have a say, really. I was like, ‘you (the gallerist) do your thing.’ I feel like the artist’s interests and the gallery’s interests are different. For me, I would love to sell all my paintings to my sitters. But for a gallery, they have a roster and they have connections. It was interesting to me that a lot of people reached out wanting to buy my work but once they got to the gallery, they were put on a waiting list. It’s funny because as an artist you make all this work and you’re sort of giving it as a gift to the world. You go through a lot of unnecessary sacrifice to make these works. It’s the first time where I’m getting the sense that some people just see it as an investment. Maybe I’m just cynical. Honestly though, I’m just very grateful that people even want my paintings. It’s so nice. But somedays now, I have to remember that this is also a business, even though painting is so personal. Painting is also my job.
RH: Your thesis exhibition, which is the paramount moment of your MFA program at Columbia University, is taking place April 2021. What can we expect?
I’m starting from scratch for my thesis. I’ve been reading a lot about how hate crimes have risen towards Asians in western countries, because of Coronavirus and people calling it the ‘Chinese virus’, the “Kung Flu.” I think in the US there have been over 2000 reported incidents. So, I put out a sign-up sheet for Asian sitters across the country, if they’ve experienced racism during Covid-19, or if they just want to be a sitter, and what I’ll do is paint a portrait of them online. I’ve had, I want to say, 70 sign-ups already which is really great. So, I’m just going week by week. In New York, sitters would be local, and you could paint them and be like, ‘let’s catch up and get coffee in a month.’ I painted someone from Georgia last week and it was weird because I had never met this guy before and we were on zoom, which isn’t that different from when a sitter comes to your studio, but then after the three hours I was like, ‘bye I guess I’ll see you…I don’t know…never?!’ When will I be in Georgia next? It was kind of funny going from not knowing someone to intensely knowing someone for three hours, and then afterwards saying, ‘okay, bye.’
Image of zoom-sitter from Georgia.
The cool thing about zoom is that you can paint people from anywhere. I want to do 21 portraits, but we’ll see. I’m also working on a second body of work that will be related to living in suburbia, just because I’m moving to Connecticut in a few weeks and it’ll be my first time properly living in a house or the suburbs. I think it will be really interesting to paint about something I’m terrified about [laughs].
RH: Do you have plans to go back to New York City post-graduation/pandemic?
SC: I hope so. In January I did this large group portrait and I got really excited by that, so I want to do more community, group paintings but I don’t think I’ll be able to do that until after we have a vaccine or things get back to normal. But I would love to go back to New York after for sure. Right now though, I would say I’m not missing out; many retail stores are closed, no gyms are open, it’s a totally different landscape right now. Just going to the supermarket is a struggle. You know what though, the roaring 20s happened after the Spanish flu so save up on your party dresses!
Thank you, Susan.
Images courtesy of the artist.
Follow Susan on Instagram or visit her website to keep up.
Susan’s thesis exhibition will be running from April 26 – May 24 at The Miriam & Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery (sixth floor), Lenfest Center for the Arts 615 W. 129 St. New York, NY.
Rachel Hansen,
Interviews Editor, MADE IN BED