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What's your connection to Taipei? I'm not from Taipei originally - I was born and raised in Taichung, a city in central Taiwan. I moved to Kaohsiung for high school, and then moved up to Taipei for university. I studied architecture in university because of my family business. Just as I was about to graduate, my mom told me that she had sold the business! That must have been a huge shock - four years of plans, gone in an instant. Yes! I had no real idea of what I wanted to do from there, so I went to Italy and attended the Instituto Marangoni to study fashion. This was almost ten years ago. Many of my classmates went on to be very successful in the fashion world - editors at Harper's Bazaar, fashion icons and designers. So there's still this element of - well, then, what am I doing? I feel like they're doing "adult things", while I'm still dabbling in child's play. I'm just doing what I love, and what I feel like doing. There's nothing wrong with that - you're doing you, and you're doing it so well! I mean, you're sitting in a cafe getting interviewed and Sean just photographed you wearing a tutu, so you must be doing something right. So how did you move back to Asia? When I first moved back to Taiwan from Italy, I worked for Old Master Q, a famous Chineselanguage comic book. This comic is decades old already; it's a classic. But my job was so boring - it was to color in every frame of the comic book, since it was originally published in black & white. They wore the same clothes in every single frame - how dull is that? So I complained to my boss, and he told me to design new clothes for the characters. Tutus for everyone, even Old Master Q! But they never even used any of my designs! I eventually left the comic to open my own underwear company, called Two Bunnies. I feel that Asian girls are more conservative, not comfortable in their sexuality. So the concept was that wearing the underwear would give you "bad girl superpowers". I remember I designed a skin colored underwear with "tattoos" printed on the ass. If you have any more in stock, send them my way. Does the company still exist? I had my underwear company for a few years - and I was struggling; I felt like I spent all day checking numbers. One day, I went to have a smoke on the balcony - the day I had to decide whether to pay the factory to do the new collection. After the cigarette, I walked into the office and told them the business was closing. It was a relief. You think that to be an owner of your own business is a big deal? No. When you're in that position, everyone is your boss. When I had the company, I was really stressed and felt that I had to do something else to take my mind off my work. My friend was studying oil painting and asked me to join. I started
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@ A N G E L A C H E N A R T Instagram
ANGELA CHEN
@ A N G E L A R O S S O Spottly
5
ARTIST AND VOGUE TAIWAN ART COLUMNIST
selling after the second painting I did. So I thought - hey, why not be an artist? So that's what I did. So you thought - let me return to a safe job, with a consistent income, all that - and then decided to become an oil painter. It wasn’t something I really planned at all. When I had the company, I was really stressed and felt that I had to do something else to take my mind off business struggles. My friend was studying oil painting and asked me to join her. I started selling after the second painting I did. So I thought - hey, why not be an artist? So that's what I did - and The Art of Angela Chen was born. Oh, no big deal! From underwear designer to oil painter! Tell me about the inspiration behind your art, then. You paint a lot of anthropomorphic portraits of animals - do they stand as symbols for someone or something? I actually mine my social circle for inspiration. I like to hear my friends' stories and gossip; observe their lives - and note the difference in the way I understand their lives and the way they perceive themselves; it’s often very different. So my paintings are in essence the stories of my friends. For example - I’ll can think of a couple that I think are together only because they're both extremely lonely. They might not know, but they show up in my artwork. You’re also the Vogue Taiwan art columnist. How’d you land that gig? I got it through my agent. It was just an idea - I thought: I think I should have a blog. So I asked, and somehow got Vogue. You’d be surprised how far you can get just by asking. But I feel like there’s an element of fate as well. You end up places you wouldn’t expect. I actually got that first Master Q job because I was loitering on the street one day and bumped into a former teacher, who happened to be the comic creator’s son. He asked - do you have a job at the moment? I said that I didn’t, and then he said - Show up at 9am tomorrow. It was a random encounter, but I took him seriously and showed up the next day. What's in the works for The Art of Angela Chen? Soon, I'm going to be the host of a TV show, interviewing artists. The show is going to be distributed in China. We want to push my artwork in China, but people don't know me yet. So hence, the show. It's an expensive plan. I’ve also been working on some cool content for my Vogue blog - the art blog isn’t what you’d think - a boring interview of me talking to some artist. It explores art in all different forms - like tattoos. I’m writing a feature about girls who choose to get tattoos, so we’ve shot lots of pictures of Taiwanese girls with cool tattoos. Taiwanese society still views these girls in a negative way; they think that having tattoos is a sign that they’re bad people. But that's obviously not true. They’re just living the way they feel like living - just like I am