credit photo: Chiara Becattini, 2024

Mapping One's Place in the World


CHEN Mei-Tsen (born in Taipei, Taiwan, in 1966) is a visual artist based in Paris, where she has lived and worked for more than three decades. A graduate of the Taipei National University of the Arts, she moved to France in 1990 to pursue further studies and has since developed a multidisciplinary practice encompassing painting, drawing, photography, video, sculpture, and installation.

​Through these diverse media, Mei-Tsen creates an inventory of vital moments, transforming personal experiences into intimate topographies—maps of memory, perception, and lived experience. As the daughter of an architect, she inherited a sensitivity to space, structure, and the built environment, an influence that has profoundly shaped her artistic practice. Her work is rooted in a search for traces and origins, exploring the foundations of what she describes as a constructive nomadism.

Central to her practice is the notion of cartography as both physical and psychological territory. Cities emerge as living organisms whose networks, transformations, and layered histories mirror the processes through which identity is formed. Drawing on experiences of travel, migration, and cultural exchange, Mei-Tsen constructs dreamlike landscapes where urban structures, organic forms, and memory intertwine.

Defining herself as an urban nomad, Mei-Tsen frequently travels alongside her exhibitions, seeking direct engagement with audiences in the cities where her work is presented. These encounters foster meaningful exchanges across cultural and social contexts, allowing her to engage with visitors and artists from diverse backgrounds. Through these journeys, she develops tangible connections with a wide range of urban environments while reflecting on the role of artistic creation in shaping her understanding of identity and existence.

In 2024, Mei-Tsen was invited by the European Cultural Centre (ECC-Italy) to participate in the Personal Structures Art Biennial in Venice. Presented at Palazzo Bembo, her solo exhibition featured the Paradise series of oil paintings. Drawing inspiration from her birthplace of Taipei, her adopted city of Paris, and other major cities she has visited—including London, New York, Singapore, Beijing, and Barcelona—the series resonates with Venice’s own urban fabric, built upon countless wooden foundations. Mei-Tsen compares cities to the branching canopies and entangled root systems of trees, envisioning them as spaces of human reconstruction: organic, protective bodies that continuously expand and transform both structurally and spiritually.

In 2012 and 2025, she was selected by the Collectif pour la Culture en Essonne (CC91) to participate in the edition of La Science de l’Art, a major visual arts biennial of the Île-de-France region, bringing together artists and scientists, highlighting research, creation, and transdisciplinary approaches to knowledge and artistic practice.

The four-hands collaboration between Mei-Tsen and Peter Klasen, a major figure in contemporary European art, emerged from three years of sustained dialogue and shared reflection. Presented at Topographie de l’Art in Paris from November 14, 2025, to January 15, 2026, the project fostered a unique exchange between two distinct artistic universes, bridging differences in generation, culture, artistic language, and conceptual perspective.

Throughout her career, Mei-Tsen has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions at galleries, contemporary art fairs, art centers, and museums across Europe, Asia, and the United States, including in France, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, Taiwan, China, Russia, and the United States. Her works are held in private collections in France, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States, China, and Taiwan.

In recognition of her artistic achievements, Chen Mei-Tsen received the European Cultural Centre Award 2024 in the Painting & Mixed Media category for her Paradise series, presented at the Personal Structures Art Biennial in Venice. Her work has been acquired by the Art Museum of China Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan, a landmark building designed by Frank Gehry and scheduled to open in 2028.

ARGUMENT - Revue artistique et littéraire
octobre - décembre 2023
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Mei-Tsen Chen
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Paul ESCUDIER
écrivain

​ARGUMENT - Art and Literature Magazine
October - December, 2023

Mei-Tsen Chen

Paul ESCUDIER
writer
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Mei-Tsen Chen was born in Taipei, Taiwan, and lives and works in Paris. She graduated from the Taipei National University of the Arts. In 1990, she moved to Paris to pursue advanced studies and subsequently obtained artist residency status in France. Working across drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, video, and installation, Chen develops a sensitive topography of lived experience. Her artistic journey is rooted in a search for traces and points of reference, pursuing answers about origins through what she describes as a constructive nomadism.

Exhibition projects in 2023 included exhibitions at Vibrantology Galleria in Taipei (from September); A.P.T. Gallery in London (October); and a solo exhibition at Julia Gallery in Taipei (December). Several additional exhibitions were scheduled for 2024.

You left Taiwan at the age of 24 to move to France. What motivated that decision?
I had just finished my studies at 24, and for some time I had felt a strong desire to travel and live elsewhere. I had already visited France beforehand—a kind of reconnaissance trip to see whether the country matched the image I had formed through books, films, and my study of art history. It was during that visit that I decided to settle there.

Was the image you had of France faithful to what you actually discovered when you arrived?
At first, I was fascinated by France at the beginning of the twentieth century, especially the Montparnasse period. Paris seemed to be the center of the world, where all the leading artists were living out their dreams. I imagined that all I had to do was arrive with my suitcase and everything would unfold just as it did in the books I had read! Reality, of course, quickly brought practical concerns—administrative procedures, learning the language, and simply managing everyday life. Yet I also met remarkable people who were intellectually stimulating. I found people to be very curious and creative. I grew tremendously here, and thirty years later, I am still in Paris.

How was your arrival in France? Did you feel a difference between the artistic environment in Taiwan and that in France?
During my studies, I did not really have a clear sense of what the art world was, so I arrived without any particular expectations. I immediately noticed cultural differences, of course, but it was precisely this cultural shock that helped me grow. It made me question my own ways of thinking and understand why others might think differently. That cultural shock was exactly what I had been seeking—something far removed from the comfort and familiarity of Taiwan. And in France, I found it.

You studied at the Taipei National University of the Arts. How did those studies influence your way of working?
It is a school whose ambition is to train artists, yet when you enter, you already feel that you have the vocation to become one. The question then becomes: What am I looking for here? At eighteen, you have no real answer. For five years, you search for yourself. You wonder whether you have something meaningful to say. Then, after graduating, you encounter artists with twenty or thirty years of experience, and the same question still remains. At school, we were protected by a kind of academic cocoon; once your studies are over, you are left to find your own way. What has stayed with me is this habit of questioning myself, this constant need to move forward. It is something that continues to drive me today.

Taiwan has a history closely linked to colonialism, which is reflected in its highly eclectic architecture. Has this multiculturalism influenced you and, by extension, your work?
Absolutely. As the daughter of an architect, I have always been highly sensitive to the built environment around me. Taipei bears strong Spanish influences, traces of Dutch colonial presence, and Japanese heritage, all of which reflect the complex history of the country. This quickly gave me the desire to discover those countries and cultures for myself. Years later, I followed the path of colonization “in reverse.” I traveled to Portugal and visited the Belém Tower; I went to the United States, Spain, and elsewhere. I felt a connection between those places and my own country. That experience has clearly influenced my work, particularly my interest in the idea of interconnection between cities. 
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How would you describe your creative process?
It begins precisely there: with emotion. I experience a shiver in front of an artwork, a landscape, a story, and I feel the desire to convey that emotion. But through which technique? On what medium? That is where my work truly begins. I try to choose different media according to the nature of the emotion I wish to express: painting, photography, resin, leather, and more. I usually have a certain vision of the image I want to create, an intuition of its potential, and I strive to find the technique best suited to remaining faithful to that vision.

Your works contain many references to cartography and architecture. Where does that come from?
One day, I discovered my father’s architectural plans among my mother’s belongings. It was an intense emotional shock—my own In Search of Lost Time. After that, I spent a great deal of time working to understand what I could do with them artistically. Following his death, I had eventually forgotten these remnants of his life’s work, as though there had been a clean break with the past. But by working with these plans as palimpsests, vivid memories of moments spent with my father resurfaced: when I was a child and helped him fold his drawings before they were bound, the distinctive smell of ammonia from freshly developed blueprints that had left such a strong impression on me… It was through this series of works that I was finally able to reconstruct this forgotten memory.

Blue appears frequently in your work. Does this stem from a mystical fascination with the color, like Yves Klein? From its pure aesthetic qualities, or from a more personal reason?
For me, blue is first and foremost the ocean, the sky, the air… the origin of life. It is what I see when I am on an airplane, looking down at the patterns of roads, seas, and landscapes. In a sense, it is almost a color that contains all other colors. And in some of my works, blue also refers directly to architectural drawings—the blue of the blueprints.

You work primarily with painting, but you also sometimes create works using resin, photography, and other media. How do you envision the future of your work and its mediums?
I have always been searching for new techniques. Of course, I learned some of them formally, such as painting and sculpture, but I have also created compositions that combine photography, video, silicone, plaster, leather, and paper to develop new forms of expression. At that time, my approach was much more conceptual. Today, I am becoming more minimalist. I work to find the simplest way to express the emotion I have experienced. My ambition is to reach something fundamental, something universal—and painting is universal. Some of the earliest traces left by human beings on this Earth, still visible today, are the drawings in the Lascaux caves. Through my art, I would like to connect people to one another, just as cities are connected in my drawings.

The theme of the city appears frequently in your work. Is there a message you wish to convey through it? Do you consider yourself a socially engaged artist?
My Taiwanese culture places great emphasis on nature—plants, minerals, and the natural world. For that reason, I have felt very close to nature since childhood. Yet despite that, I am a city person, 200 percent. The city occupies a very important place in my work, but I have often linked it to vegetal forms. In my Paradise series, for example, the branching structures of a plant merge with those of a city’s streets, much like rhizomes. In this way, I create an analogy between the city and a living organism weaving together its nervous system and circulatory network. That is the true commitment of my art. My message is that human beings are connected to their environment in the broadest sense—natural, certainly, but also cultural. We exist in a constant state of interaction with other living beings on Earth.

What have been your artistic influences, if any?
We are influenced by everything: people, sensations, and of course art itself. I particularly remember being deeply moved by Jean-Christophe by Romain Rolland, which tells the story of a young German composer who arrives in Paris to develop his art. I especially recall a scene on the Pont Neuf where the young composer eats stale bread while hoping for a better future. It is precisely this kind of intense emotion that can become the starting point for an entire series of works.
​My inspirations come more from my emotions than from artists themselves.

You exhibit extensively around the world. How important is exhibiting to you? Do you enjoy engaging in dialogue with people who experience your work?
I love it. It is through exhibiting that one realizes how much the way a work is perceived depends on the place where it is shown. And for an artistic practice that places so much emphasis on culture and travel, that is essential. My exhibitions are often opportunities to exchange ideas with visitors, to delve even deeper into that cultural encounter, and to see whether something meaningful happens. The exhibition itself becomes material for future works. At first, I found it a little difficult—especially in France because of the language. I always felt that I was not expressing exactly what I wanted to say. But I learned, and today I enjoy it very much.

Do you have a message for young artists who may be reading this?
Get to work! (laughs) Try not to limit yourself to what you already know, and always dare to go further. It is through work that we search for ourselves—and through work that we find ourselves.