BIOGRAPHY
Chen Mei-Tsen, born in Taipei (Taiwan), is a visual artist based in Paris (France) for over 30 years. A graduate of Taipei National University of the Arts, her artistic practice spans painting, drawing, photography, video, installation, and sculpture, through which she explores the intricacies of her personal quest for a sense of belonging, identity, and connection. Her journey reflects the essence of a nomadic existence—forever moving and seeking. She thus transforms personal life experiences into a continuously writing perceptual map. As the daughter of an architect, Mei-Tsen views the city as a living structure that evolves over time through movement and human experience. Defining herself as an urban nomad, she investigates the relationship between place and identity, tracing how displacement and return shape individual and collective topographies. Her work has been exhibited internationally and won the European Cultural Centre Award (Painting & Mixed Media) at the Personal Structures Art Biennial in Venice in 2024. Her paintings were collected by Taiwan’s China Medical University Art Museum in Taichung, a building designed by Frank Gehry which will be inaugurated in 2028.
NEWS
Venice Art Biennial - Personal Structures, European Cultural Centre in Venice, 9 May - 22 November, 2026.
In Flux: Where Lines Becomes Currents
Arriving in Venice teaches you that arrival is never final—and that getting lost is an essential part of the experience. Venice has long served as a "living archives" of global exchange, its "liquid roads" are the city’s arteries, serving as the infrastructure for cultivating the meeting of disparate currents. In this setting, Chen Mei-Tsen invites the viewers to walk across and feel immersed in front of her work In Flux (2025), a monumental work consists of five vertical panels. This turns viewing into an act of navigation where, much like the experience of Venice, orientation is never fixed but is constantly re-made through motion.
An ultramarine blue backdrop sets a unified tone for countless layers of white traces that oscillate between the macrocosm and the microcosm; from a distance, they resemble a grand aerial view of the ocean, but up close, they become living organisms like jellyfish or nerve cells and vascular tissue. These flowing lines traverse the panels with rhythmic momentum, sometimes gathering into dense clusters and other times wandering as free filaments into the blue void. As light catches the chalk to create an atmosphere of mist or haze, the work gains a time-based depth, continually renegotiating itself through the viewer’s position.
The rhythmic movement of these "breathing" white lines reflects Chen’s personal history as a Taiwanese artist who has lived in Paris for over 30 years. Born in Taipei to an architect father, Chen grew up surrounded by blueprints—a visual language of precision that eventually evolved into her own artistic vocabulary. She bridges the known and unknown, revealing an artist who draws nutrients from diverse cultures while remaining in a state of permanent flux. In Flux reveals Chen’s notion of "constructive nomadism," where moving across geographies is a creative act rather than a rupture, and displacement becomes a space of construction. Her lines—at once architectural and organic—trace the fragile boundaries between permanence and transience. In time, her work suggests not control but surrender: an openness to change where structure and spontaneity coexist in a fine balance, inviting a quiet negotiation between where we come from and where we are becoming.
– Jenny Lee
In Flux: Where Lines Becomes Currents
Arriving in Venice teaches you that arrival is never final—and that getting lost is an essential part of the experience. Venice has long served as a "living archives" of global exchange, its "liquid roads" are the city’s arteries, serving as the infrastructure for cultivating the meeting of disparate currents. In this setting, Chen Mei-Tsen invites the viewers to walk across and feel immersed in front of her work In Flux (2025), a monumental work consists of five vertical panels. This turns viewing into an act of navigation where, much like the experience of Venice, orientation is never fixed but is constantly re-made through motion.
An ultramarine blue backdrop sets a unified tone for countless layers of white traces that oscillate between the macrocosm and the microcosm; from a distance, they resemble a grand aerial view of the ocean, but up close, they become living organisms like jellyfish or nerve cells and vascular tissue. These flowing lines traverse the panels with rhythmic momentum, sometimes gathering into dense clusters and other times wandering as free filaments into the blue void. As light catches the chalk to create an atmosphere of mist or haze, the work gains a time-based depth, continually renegotiating itself through the viewer’s position.
The rhythmic movement of these "breathing" white lines reflects Chen’s personal history as a Taiwanese artist who has lived in Paris for over 30 years. Born in Taipei to an architect father, Chen grew up surrounded by blueprints—a visual language of precision that eventually evolved into her own artistic vocabulary. She bridges the known and unknown, revealing an artist who draws nutrients from diverse cultures while remaining in a state of permanent flux. In Flux reveals Chen’s notion of "constructive nomadism," where moving across geographies is a creative act rather than a rupture, and displacement becomes a space of construction. Her lines—at once architectural and organic—trace the fragile boundaries between permanence and transience. In time, her work suggests not control but surrender: an openness to change where structure and spontaneity coexist in a fine balance, inviting a quiet negotiation between where we come from and where we are becoming.
– Jenny Lee
Solo exhibition "Maison" at V. galleria, Taipei, 1st January - 1st March, 2026.
The painting "In Flux (4-5)" is published on the cover of PLASTIR n°79.
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Group exhibition “The Interval Between: Galerie Pierre 35th Anniversary Exhibition”, Taichung, 20 December, 2025 - 13 February, 2026.
Chen Mei-Tsen’s “Out of the Blue” series is based on architectural blueprints left by the artist’s father. Through a collaborative, four-handed approach, the artist creates works on these blueprints, opening up new possibilities. For her, painting is a way to continue the dialogue and communicate with her father, memories, and architecture. In her paintings, the “field” is no longer a measurable space but a spiritual dimension. The distance between blue and white becomes a gap in time and memory. The “Utopia” series builds on this exploration by shifting the focus from personal memory to geographical and cultural migrations. She observes the world from a wandering perspective, transforming the experience of movement into nourishment—a pursuit of identity and a coordinate of existence.
Chen Mei-Tsen’s “Out of the Blue” series is based on architectural blueprints left by the artist’s father. Through a collaborative, four-handed approach, the artist creates works on these blueprints, opening up new possibilities. For her, painting is a way to continue the dialogue and communicate with her father, memories, and architecture. In her paintings, the “field” is no longer a measurable space but a spiritual dimension. The distance between blue and white becomes a gap in time and memory. The “Utopia” series builds on this exploration by shifting the focus from personal memory to geographical and cultural migrations. She observes the world from a wandering perspective, transforming the experience of movement into nourishment—a pursuit of identity and a coordinate of existence.
ARTIST STATEMENT
"What is near cinnabar turns red, and what is near ink turns black.” This Chinese proverb generally refers to the fact that the environment has a great influence on people. That is why, during the more than 30 years I have lived in France and traveled to cities in many countries, I have wondered about the impact on my life plans. Daughter of an architect, a transmission that plays an important role in my artistic path. These series of paintings are my life blueprint of wandering abroad, my travel diary. I search, I search for myself by exploring experiences, and sometimes I find myself in lost childhood memories that turn into intertwined and fluctuating lines. My own path is part of a search for traces, in search of answers to the origins of a constructive nomadism.
I am aware of Taiwan's multi-colonized past, as evidenced by the juxtaposition of architecture from different eras in the capital city of Taipei. To compensate for the finiteness of my territory as an islander, I set out to encounter other cultures. Because the search for identity is built as much by movement as by immersion. I wander through cities, moving from one path to another like the roots of plants in search of nutrients. Like the rhizomes, I create my own network map. And the map becomes a dream, a utopia that connects and interweaves disparate networks. In this way, I depict cities that change and evolve both physically and mentally as the growth of trees affects them, and I explore this effect on my own identity.
With the help of digital map researches, I re-explore the streets of many cities like my inner journeys of initiation. Enriched by centuries of multicultural exchanges, these cities, have developed an architectural and social urbanism in the manner of a living organism that weaves its vital networks, metamorphosing over time into expansive topographies. As an urban nomad, I fly over roads and oceans through clouds that flow from a metaphorical cartography of energy. Constantly connected to my environment and other living beings, inspired by natural elements as well as scientific research, my artwork oscillates between the microcosm and the macrocosm, and is based on an aesthetic of displacement and trajectory.
I am aware of Taiwan's multi-colonized past, as evidenced by the juxtaposition of architecture from different eras in the capital city of Taipei. To compensate for the finiteness of my territory as an islander, I set out to encounter other cultures. Because the search for identity is built as much by movement as by immersion. I wander through cities, moving from one path to another like the roots of plants in search of nutrients. Like the rhizomes, I create my own network map. And the map becomes a dream, a utopia that connects and interweaves disparate networks. In this way, I depict cities that change and evolve both physically and mentally as the growth of trees affects them, and I explore this effect on my own identity.
With the help of digital map researches, I re-explore the streets of many cities like my inner journeys of initiation. Enriched by centuries of multicultural exchanges, these cities, have developed an architectural and social urbanism in the manner of a living organism that weaves its vital networks, metamorphosing over time into expansive topographies. As an urban nomad, I fly over roads and oceans through clouds that flow from a metaphorical cartography of energy. Constantly connected to my environment and other living beings, inspired by natural elements as well as scientific research, my artwork oscillates between the microcosm and the macrocosm, and is based on an aesthetic of displacement and trajectory.
ARGUMENT - Revue artistique et littéraire, France.
October - December 2023
October - December 2023
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