Liang-Jung Chen is a Taiwanese-born London-based artist and designer working across drawings, sculptures, installations and narrative environments. Deeply interested in subtle tension embedded in everyday scenarios, her works are often informed by politics hidden in artefacts and material culture theory. Her background in industrial design allows her to bridge diverse perspectives with detail-oriented awareness. She is currently an artist in residence in Tangent Projects.

TMDC: Where are you from and how does this affect your design?
Liang: I am originally from Taiwan. I was born in the city of Taipei but was raised in the countryside of Tainan. At the end of my course in university, I did a product design internship in Copenhagen before relocating to London. My personal journey of moving around has a great influence on my work. I would like to think that my work reflects a subtle sensibility rooted in East Asian culture, which is oblique and delicate. Meanwhile, I also appreciate how radical and bold art is in West Europe. I would say the ideas behind my work is a fusion between these two cultures.

“You could call it boringness,
that is something that attracts me.”

Why did you come to TMDC?
I started my residency in Tangent Projects and while I was developing my project I was looking for a place to build things, where I can create the vessels, I wanted to use for my performance. Through a fellow artist's recommendation in Tangent Projects I came to TMDC for a visit and I loved it here. It has everything I need in the workshop, so I became a one month member. After finishing them here I presented the performance for the first time at Terranova, a bookstore in Sant Antoni on July 7th.

I came to TMDC with a very simple design sketch. The vessels are basically cylinders but what I didn't think of was that they require a very precise set of jigs to hold them while I make them. I used glue to fix the aluminum sheets together and that's why I needed a really good set of jigs. People here offered me a lot of ideas of how I can make the jig.

How come your fascination for vassel and why did you build your own?
I think my fascination for vessels comes from my background in product design and my interest in anthropology. To design a container or a vessel is probably a brief every product designer has handled sooner or later. The most primitive vessels in human history were our palms. Human beings first used our hands to serve water. As civilization and technology went on, we developed modern materials to hold liquids in different manners. It is something so old, universal and ordinary. You could call it boringness, that is something that attracts me.

“It also helped me connect better with my own body in terms of exploring the relationship between everyday gestures and artifacts.”

I had to design my own vessel because there is just no existing set of vessels that has the quality of what I wanted to achieve with this performance. I wanted a set of vessel that share the same volume in a very minimal way, from the shape of a tray to the shape of a tube. I want the liquid to flow smoothly, with a design of a good spout.
It turned out that the spouts I designed, some of them don't work perfectly fine but they are good enough for the performance, but this is something I probably will continue working on even after the performance.

The feeling of losing something is very present in your performance, what is your intension?
I think the sense of losing something small and even unconsciously is a very shared and universal experience in our everyday life, it is very relatable to everyone. It is something we don’t even think about but actually piling up it becomes something big, or sometimes even problematic. My work serves kind of a reminder for everyone to pay more attention to details in our life.

It is my first performance ever based on a piece of work, because I always worked with objects before, I usually just present them. But this time I wanted to express a sense of labor and that sense of repetitiveness. So I thought performance would be the best way to deliver this idea. It also helped me connect better with my own body in terms of exploring the relationship between everyday gestures and artifacts. It made it more holistic.

It's my second time in Barcelona. I came here just for trips a few years ago but of course it is very different to actually live here. In general I found Barcelona a very vibrant city and people are generous with sharing ideas, very keen to communicate which I think is vital for creativity, this sense of openness. I really like the spontaneous quality of it, like how people come into your life by an unexpected coincidence. It’s a very beneficial quality for a creative person.

I am going back to London for a half year before I take on another 2-month residency in Hampshire in South East England. I would like to develop more performance based projects, but hopefully I will manage to push it to another level. I am grateful. My time here in Barcelona has laid a foundation for a new chapter of my practice that is exciting.

Thanks Liang!

Tangent Projects - Residency project "Lightness of Being"
Live Performance Liang-Jug Chen / Friday 22 July, 7pm, C. Marti Codolar 41

*All photos were taken by Gin Yih Cheong