Dec 30

Dec 30 TheW+ Art: Movana Chen Knits Stories of Travel / Hong Kong

Movana Chen is a Hong Kong-based artist whose life and career has taken her everywhere- and she has the artworks to prove it. Her life peppered with different work experiences, interests, and travel, eventually allowed Chen to fuse all of these stories together as a life’s work in a knitted paper medium she defines as “KNITerature”. Most recently, a solo show we’ve visited in Hong Kong’s Flowers Gallery the KNITerature series of knitted works with pieces stretching back to 2009 with the latest pieces, her first large scale paintings ever, completed only this year in the shadow of a worldwide pandemic.

Movana Chen was born in Mainland China in 1975, Chen’s family moved to Hong Kong in the 80s and then moved to Singapore in the 90s where she found early interest in art and fashion, which was then followed up with a study of fashion design at the London College of Fashion before returning to Hong Kong to study accountancy. Her desire for art and creativity made her quit a short life as an accountant before finally earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 2005, and then completing an education in Exhibition Studies and Art Curatorship at the Hong Kong Art School in 2007. Since then Chen has exhibited in solo and group shows in Hong Kong, Istanbul, Italy, Venice, Shanghai, Hannover, Rotterdam, Melbourne, Paris, Singapore, and Seoul.

“The Long Journey is how I’ve met people, create a dialogue, and weave our stories together with these pieces.” - Movana Chen, Artist

Movana Chen at Flowers Gallery, November 2020. Photo by JJ Acuna.

Movana Chen and “The Long Road”. Photo by JJ Acuna, November 2020 at Flowers Gallery.

In person, the knitted works look like a a big clump of mass, either hung on wire or arranged in rolls. Close up, the massive works are made up of a cellular membrane of small, precise, and minute paper folds interlinked. The paper comes from shredding paper, and then- using a typical knitting needle, is then hand-woven carefully by Chen. I asked her if she does these knitted works in a meditative state- she claims she doesn’t know if this is the case, but she definitely loves listening to techno dance music while doing the work.

One of the pieces in the gallery’s foyer area is “The Long Journey”, which consists of a TV, books, a bench, and KNITteratures hung and rolled up on a cart. The material that makes up this piece is composed of maps she’s collected herself and maps donated by many friends she’s made on her journeys. The hung piece took about one year to create, while the rolled up piece, which weighs 10 kilograms, is one of the few on-going process pieces dating back to 2009.

Movana Chen ruffles through more donated and collected maps from her journeys. Phot by JJ Acuna, November 2020 at Flowers Gallery.

Drawing in Cray-Pas of travel memories or fantasies, by Movana Chen. Photo by JJ Acuna, November 2020 at Flowers Gallery.

Movana Chen’s name written in her language. Photo by JJ Acuna, November 2020 at Flowers Gallery.

Another piece next to the entry is “wearable art” something informed from her days studying fashion. These wearable pieces, which she wears herself for her more performative exhibitions, are called “Body Container”. Performances are sometimes done in-gallery or outside on the street. The works are made up of maps from different locations, like Paris, London, Italy, Rotterdam, and even in her native home, Hong Kong. In the gallery the tallest piece is about 3 years in the making. And each time she performs with the work, she adds a bit more paper to continue the composition.

Movana Chen’s “Body Container”, a 3-Year Project. Photo by JJ Acuna, November 2020 at Flowers Gallery.

Movana Chen’s “Body Container”. Photo by JJ Acuna, November 2020 at Flowers Gallery.

Gallerist Echo Guy and Movana Chen. Photo by JJ Acuna, November 2020 at Flowers Gallery.

The newest pieces in the show are large scale paintings titled “How Are You? #1” and “How Are You? #2”. These works are contemplative pieces based off of the 100 postcards Chen made of rainbow-coloured lines, not unlike the scale of paper in her knitted works, to friends and supporters all around the world. It’s a symbolic and essential way Chen continues to connect and contextualise the world around her despite a shut down of the physical travel that defines so much of her process.