Suki chan

Education
Like many, Chan found the art school environment quite difficult in many ways. However, after graduating in 1999, Chan was approached by an art consultant working for Deutsche Bank and spent months producing a body of work for her consideration. Although this did not lead to Deutsche Bank picking her up in the end, Chan did not see the time spent on it as wasted, as it meant that she averted the ‘post-graduation’ slump many artists experience. Maintaining the momentum for her practice, Chan started applying for opportunities, building contacts that led to future opportunities. a-n Magazine was an important aide at this stage, as Chan found many exhibiting opportunities through open calls to artists.


Exhibitions

In recent years, Chan has exhibited both in the UK and China, building an international profile. As an artist, she feels connected to both places, yet simultaneously in between both of them, a sensibility that is evident in her work, with its emphasis on fragmentation and liminal space. Chan also feels a desire not to be pigeon holed by labels imposed by others. In a sense one can see this in her work also – using tropes associated with both the East and the West and transforming them into something else.

Interestingly, Chan finds there are often differences in how her work is perceived in China and Europe, with Chinese artists often feeling surprised that her work is ‘very Chinese’ as she is (to them) Western, and Westerners commenting on her (and her works) ‘Chinese-ness’. Chan’s work niftily remains resistant to such binary comparisons, finding it’s own space between the two, using the formal and the material to explore ideas around cultural displacement and difference amongst other things.

Chan has also exhibited as part of the Liverpool Biennale, the ‘When in Rome’ touring exhibition as well as spaces in Canada, Serbia, Thailand, the US and Ireland.

i like this image because of the extremely small depth of field