Growing up moving between China and America, having lived in many distinctive neighborhoods, I have been a part of a wide spectrum of communities that don’t overlap. My art reflects the struggle to make sense of my place and identity by making connections across time, societies, and places. R.B. Kitaj defined a diasporist artist as someone who lives and paints in two societies at the same time. The unsettled nature of a diasporist’s existence is an important source of inspiration for my art. For the immigrant, the ocean no longer establishes a definitive barrier. The internet, for instance, enables a constant partial exposure to people and places from the past. Memory and imagination are both fed and interrupted by this, and accounting for one’s origins and place can be more problematic than ever. My works respond to this condition.

Read Catherine LeComte Lecce’s interview with Jasmine Chen.

• Matrescence
• The New Drawing Room