Jenny Jiaying Chen is a writer and curator who lives and works in Shanghai and New York. She is the Art Director of the Longlati Foundation and a Ph.D. candidate in Western Philosophy at East China Normal University. Chen’s early practice revolves around technological reality and its permeating humanistic landscape. She recently turned to the question of the mind and body radicalized by technology and was inspired by Turing to delve into the inquiry of sexuality. Her Ph.D. thesis, More than Sex? –Feminist Reflections on Body-Matter focuses on the frontiers of the body, new materialism, and the metaphysics of sex. At the same time, she sees art as a concrete means of subverting the existing partition of the sensible and frames of intelligibility.

She holds a BA from the China Academy of Art and received her MA from Lancaster University in the UK. From 2015 to 2019, she held a position at MadeIn Company. Her texts are accessible on many art media (such as ArtReview China, Artforum (CN), Ocula, etc.). China Academy of Art includes her paper in Forces of Reticulation. Co-writing and editing of Shanghai Contemporary Art Archival Project was published by MOUSSE.

Honour & Awards

Winner of “Hyundai Blue Prize 2019”, Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing

Shortlisted for the “Emerging Curators Project 2018” hosted by Power Station of Art (PSA), Shanghai

International Awards for Art Criticism (IAAC) 3 Finalist, 2016

Publishing

Co-writing Chapter “Augmented Galatea for Physical Pygmalion: A Phenomenological Approach to Intimacy in VTubers in the East Asia Region", in Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence, will be soon published by Springer

Becoming others: Playing the virtual identity and intimacy, Prometeica NºESPECIAL Invierno 2022

Preliminaries to “Digital Intimacy”, co-writing with Prof. Nicola Liberati, BAU 18

Editing artist’s writings, Heichi Magazine, 2020

Co-editing Shanghai Contemporary Art Archival Project after 1998 – 2012, MOUSSE Publishing, 2018

Curatorial & Projects    

“Let 100 Reading Groups Bloom Season II: Meeting Others Halfway“, Supported by Pro Helvetia Swiss Arts Council @Special edition Project, Shanghai; By Art Matter, Hangzhou; Chizi Space, Quanzhou; Topred Center for Contemporary Art (TCCA), 2022

“USB Multi-Port connect Exhibition”, MadeIn Gallery & Gallery Func & Qiao Space, Shanghai, 2021

“AI: Love and Artificial Intelligence”, Hyundai Motorstudio, Beijing, 2020  

“Copernicus”, E.M.Bannister Gallery of Rhode Island College, Providence, U.S, 2019         

Shanghai Curators Lab, Shang Academy of Fine Arts, 2018

“Remote Sensing”, Slime Engine Virtual Space, 2018  

“Pixel Park”, Jingan Sculpture Park, Shanghai, 2016