Dr. Yanyun Chen

Dr. Yanyun Chen (Singapore, b. 1986) is a visual artist, researcher, and lecturer. Encompassing drawing, new media and installation, her practice looks into aesthetic, cultural and technological inheritances on one’s body and unravelling fictional and philosophical notions of embodiment grounded in the physicality of human and botanical forms.

She received the prestigious Singapore National Arts Council Young Artist Award (2020) and ArtOutreach IMPART Visual Artist Award (2019). Her works were also awarded the Prague International Indie Film Festival Q3 Best Animation Award (2020), National Youth Film Awards Best Art Direction Award (2019), Singapore Art Museum President’s Young Talents People’s Choice Award (2018), Japan Media Arts Festival (2012) and Lee Kuan Yew Gold Medal Award (2009). She is listed on Tatler’s Asia’s Most Influential: The Culture List (2021). Her works have been exhibited internationally, including Singapore, Buenos Aires, South Korea, Canada, USA, Belarus, The Netherlands and Czech Republic.

Chen graduated from the European Graduate School Philosophy, Art, and Critical Thought PhD programme (2018), its Communications MA programme (2014), and Nanyang Technological University School of Art Design and Media Digital Animation programme (2009). She was the Andreas Teoh Contemporary Asian Art Fellow (2021-2022), Georgette Chen Fellow (2020-2022) and Lecturer for the Humanities division of Yale-NUS College in Singapore. She is currently based in Boston, Massachussets where she teaches at the Tufts University School of Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Outside of academia, she is the founder of illustration and animation studio Piplatchka, and a partner of publishing house Delere Press LLP.