Artist bio

Bilin Chen is a multimedia artist and designer based in NYC. She graduated with a BA degree in New Media Art from Shanghai Theater Academy, China, in 2017 and received her MFA degree in Digital Interactive Art from Pratt Institute, the USA, in 2019. Before enrolling at Pratt, Bilin received an MFA scholarship supporting her study at Pratt Institute. Trained in classical painting from age 6 to 17 and started digitally creating art after high school, she continues to find her unique voice as an artist and a designer in capturing the formless feelings and nuanced emotions from her creation and exploration. Her work mainly focuses on humans and society by exploring the relationship between her inner world - the spiritual world, and the outer world- the community. As a human and a female, she would spend her whole life navigating who she is by observing the world and involving herself in the outer world, experiencing and sensing it. She exhibited her immersive interactive work Who Are You? I am me. in Pablo's Birthday Gallery, lower Manhattan, in 2019. In the same year, her Photography Rouge was selected and displayed in What A Woman exhibition in Artosino Gallery, midtown Manhattan. Based on her bicultural and interdisciplinary experience, including painting, drawing, theater, design, art, technology, and philosophy, different media and materials provide various possibilities for her to express her thoughts appropriately. 

Title

Rouge

Medium/Genre

Digital Art

Artist Statement

This piece encourages people in society to think about the relationship between makeup and a female. Makeup is an essential element for a woman in the community. It makes a woman prettier than in a natural mode. A question has always haunted me: if women control makeup as an additional tool to make one more stunning, or the makeup controls women and takes over a woman's natural beauty. In these series pieces, a model in the image is wearing full virtual makeup projected by a projector and different accessories. She stares at the outer world full of fear, uncertainty, and discomfort in the three cold-tone images. Then, the image turns into a warm tone, and the model's emotion turns to confidence, pleasure, and optimism. It is a spiritual process of the model, and it may also be a process for every woman.

How it fits into contest

Ephesians 6:10-20 mainly demonstrated people fighting against the rulers and authorities to gain freedom. As a female artist, I would love to express how I acquire freedom and equality from a female's perspective in society. I used to resist doing makeup when I grew up. Every time I put makeup on my face, I feel that my face skin cannot breathe, which impacts my mental health. Admittedly, makeup is essential for every woman in society, and it embellishes women for sure, while I rejected the feeling that I put makeup on my face. So my inner world started to fight with the outer world severely. I spent five years figuring out "the war," and I realized that I was not fighting with the external world, starting from the beginning. On the contrary, I kept fighting with myself. Once I compromise with myself, there is no war between me and the outer world.

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