Yanyun Chen (b. 1986, Singapore) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans drawing, animation, installation, and sculpture. Her work is grounded in an ongoing investigation into time, memory, grief, and the stories we carry—physically, psychologically, and intergenerationally. Through precise material processes, Chen navigates the intimate terrain of the body and the cultural inscriptions it bears, exploring how personal and inherited narratives are etched onto skin, surface, and gesture.

At the core of Chen’s practice is a commitment to drawing—not only as a visual method but as a philosophical and corporeal act. Her drawings, often rendered in charcoal, graphite, and steel, carry the weight of scars, silences, and tenderness. Projects such as The Scars That Write Us (2018), commissioned by the Singapore Art Museum for the President’s Young Talents exhibition, examine the dual nature of wounds—as both markers of survival and burdens of history. Other significant bodies of work include Stories of a Woman and Her Dowry (2019), an installation that meditates on intergenerational trauma, gendered expectations, and familial lineage; and Women in Rage (2019), a collaborative animated film reimagining mythical female figures through the lens of fury, resistance, and embodiment.

Chen’s practice frequently challenges traditional hierarchies of knowledge and form. While she honours the philosophies and aesthetic values of East Asian calligraphy and classical drawing, she also questions the societal structures that shape how women’s bodies are governed, celebrated, and repressed. Her works often blur the line between narrative and abstraction, intimate and institutional, inviting audiences to consider how memory, culture, and language shape the internal architecture of the self.

Her work has been exhibited widely, including at the Thailand Biennale (2021), Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement (2020), and in exhibitions across Singapore, Southeast Asia, South Korea, and the United States. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Arts Council Young Artist Award (2020), the ArtOutreach IMPART Visual Artist Award (2019), and the Singapore Art Museum President’s Young Talents People’s Choice Award (2018). Her works are held in both public and private collections, and continue to resonate for their poetic depth, conceptual clarity, and material sensibility.

Chen holds a PhD in Philosophy, Art, and Critical Thought and an MA in Communications from the European Graduate School, as well as a BFA in Animation from Nanyang Technological University.Chen currently lives and works in Singapore, where she continues to explore the entanglements between tradition, the body, and the quiet resistance of art as a site for remembering and rewriting.