"X-RADIATION"
09 May - 29 June 2024
Olympia Main Gallery
Margaret Chen -- Sculptor / Mixed Media Artist
Margaret Chen is a Jamaican sculptor of Chinese descent. Educated at the Jamaica School of Art (EMSVPA), she left Jamaica after graduating with distinction to pursue post-graduate studies in Canada at York University, Ontario where she earned a BFA with Honours in 1984, and MFA in 1986. It was in Canada that she began her career as a sculptor, exhibiting in several Toronto galleries with increasing success. In the late 1980s Margaret chose to return to Jamaica for her first solo exhibition at the Upstairs Downstairs Galleries; to establish her studio, and to become an important contributor to group exhibitions locally and Jamaican exhibitions abroad. The sculptures are powerful and monumental, tending towards installation. The creative process is intensive, painstaking and meticulous. The work is a deeply personal exploration of self and the passage of time; ancestral roots, identity and history; and philosophical concerns common to human life.
These mixed media constructions take months and years to build and are an ongoing process, with previous ones informing present ones. Foraged objects, natural and man-made, are gathered and layered to build a framework that slowly grows and becomes form under her direction. She takes these everyday objects, deconstructs and isolates them from their usual context and presents as a work of art.
"I cannot sever the past from my present works. Wherever I stand, whatever I do, my history is very much a part of my work, its base lying in the sum total of selected fragments from the past.”
"My work happens as a result of the mysterious interweaving of process and content, the inanimate and animate, matter and spirit. The creative process for me is an on-going and progressive one that builds up layer by layer, work after work. Margaret prefers viewers to interpret her work rather than tell them how to think or feel, this opens up immense interpretive possibilities. Each work grows naturally out of another. It is the process that drives her towards new boundaries and revelations.”
"It is in hindsight that I perceive my work as an on-going process, an attempt to plumb the depths of that primordial slime from which life first emerged' and to reveal to oneself again and again, through work after work, the site of one's own origin.” – Margaret Chen
Opening night
Exhibited works
View External links and Publications
Click here to read exhibition feature on The Journal of Jamaican Art
Click here to read exhibition feature on PREELit.
Exhibition Review by Kevarney K.R.
in The Journal of Jamaican Art (June 08, 2024):
"Cross-section of Interior: X-Radiation" is a strange and fascinating showcase of mixed-media constructions that captivate the audience with their sheer scale and obscurity, while inviting them to probe into their alien nature. Margaret Chen’s latest exhibition comes two years after her most recent group exhibition “everything slackens in a wreck” (2022), and five years after her solo exhibition “Substrata” (2019), held at The Olympia Gallery.
This new exhibition showcases a body of artwork that spans twenty-four years in the making, commencing with Cross-section of Arc (1999) and culminating with Cross-section of Interior (2023). Having invested nearly a quarter century of commitment to this body of work, Chen has successfully honed her artistry and each artwork reflects her artistic idiosyncrasies.
In “Cross-section of Interior: X-Radiation” Chen skillfully merges the organic and inorganic, the natural and artificial, into unfamiliar forms that excite our inherent curiosities. Chen’s bricolage monuments are constructed with diverse materials ranging from solid wood, wood strips, plywood, tree branches, bamboo, and leather, to film, acetate, Plexiglass, a taxidermied bird, and the most salient among them, x-rays.
The artist’s peculiar use of materials brings attention to the intricate dynamics between living and nonliving entities within the universe, and specifically within our human environments. Rather than starkly juxtaposing these materials, Chen seamlessly blends them into cohesive bodies which seemingly occupy both the realms of the living and nonliving."
"Excavating the Bones of New Deities in Margaret Chen’s Work" in Exhibition Review by Sonn Ngai in PREELit (December 30, 2024):
"There is a consistently eldritch quality to Chen’s large-scale mixed media sculptures which I am particularly intrigued by. One not only gets the idea that they are to be seen as artefacts but also as beings, as monuments and as vessels/vehicles. The impressive scale and positioning throughout the space recall ideals of ancient monoliths unearthed from a foregone time. As if they are things which were never meant to be revealed to the eye of man but are here now in a new era fully on display. Like the buried pieces of an ancient god who is no longer worshipped because their followers are all long gone. Would such a god still hold power even though no one believes in them? Belief after all IS such a powerful thing. The very gods themselves are sustained by the immense power of something as simple as human belief. Entire worlds are shaped into existence by something as fragile as a wish.
As with any work of art, one’s beliefs and the ability to extend or suspend them come into play naturally. However, what is unavoidable with Chen’s sculptures is how they make you want to believe in them as parts of a single whole. In “OVOID/O void“, we see how its peculiar placement in a corner evokes feelings of being stalked by something unknowable, its name stemming from ‘void’ further arousing one’s unease. Ovoid evokes ideas of voids and chasms but also sleep paralysis demons, motionless spectres standing in corners, the flickers of shadows in a room that disappear when you turn to look. Only the sculpture is there, demanding you see all its pieces and parts — the sinewy reds and the ephemeral grayscales. Corners are also significant concepts in mythical lore as they represent a kind of liminal space, portals into other places where it is implied the unknown can slip through, or you gain glimpses into the void itself.
Where seeing is concerned the eye as a motif is a very impactful image as it relates to the worship of a god or gods. Keep in mind the biblical adage, “But the lord said, you cannot see my face because no human can look at me and remain alive (Exodus 33:20).” In Cross section of Imago we are given a hands-on engagement with the art of seeing divinity, as its gravity-defying nature means you must crane your neck towards the sky to experience the work in its fullness; viewers thus find themselves quite literally searching for God in the fleshy cloudlike growths above.
Sight as a theme cannot be ignored in relation to Cross-section of aperture/orifice either, with its obvious resemblance to an eye but also following the imagined “eyeline” of the piece, tends to lead you around the room as if being purposefully guided around the exhibition. The title once again references orifices and voids, the eye itself being both in a sense. The eye receives light which translates it into images in the same way a void works, by consuming light. The sculpture can thus be interpreted as a literal representation of the void staring back at us.
Looking away from Aperture’s line of sight you are met with the almost bio-organic semi architectural feel of Cross-section of Curve l. At the same time one can imagine it as a small cut of scales from the body of a very large fish or sea serpent. This formal diversity helps communicate the idea that these works present a mystery to be solved, pieces to be fitted together like some kind of puzzle. This sense of mystery is also evoked by Cross-Section of Ark continuing the connection to the deep. The boat-like structure and title are easily identifiable biblical references which tie in nicely with Curve’s resemblance to aquatic scales. Do the obvious references to Noah’s Ark and the Leviathan suggest a biblical connection? Both are anecdotes which fundamentally address the unconquerable power of nature/god, testaments to the ability of gods to create forces capable of destroying and conquering destruction itself.