CHEN CHING-YAO

Born in Taipei in 1976, Chen Ching-Yao received his MFA in Fine Arts from Taipei National University of the Arts in 2006. He has won the Award of Newly Emerging Artists in Taiwan and the First Prize of Taipei Arts Award. He was also the recipient of Asian Cultural Council’s grant in 2009, which enabled him to conduct a residency in New York. In recent years, Chen’s work centers around photography and painting. The range of his subject matter is very wide, and his work focuses on the deconstruction of power and symbols. He often appropriates symbols of popular culture, especially those of the Japanese and Korean pop culture, and even the portraits of Asian politicians, and drastically recreates and transforms them into humorous, amusing images and behaviors, or simply assumes the roles of these figures himself in his work. By doing so, he creates a strong sense of contrast to the original subject and produces laughter. His downplaying the symbols of power is undoubtedly a sarcastic satire against modern society. While making his audience laugh about the situation, he also aims to make them reflect upon the absurdity of different actions of power in their surroundings.