About the Artist

Yidan Chen is an artist from the northwestern region of China, where wind-shaped mountains, dry air, and long distances quietly structure a person’s sense of time. “I come from a place where the wind slowly wears things away,” Chen says. “Perhaps that's why I believe more in slow yet irreversible changes.”Working across film production, sculpture, ceramics, and scent-based installation, Chen is drawn to materials that shift, melt, or erode. From butter figures that collapse under their own warmth, to ceramic animal traps warped into soft, improbable forms, to lenticular architectures filled with watching eyes, her works foreground the moment when form begins to falter or meanings loosen from their assigned roles.

Chen studied at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing before continuing her research-driven practice at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Moving between two artistic and cultural contexts has shaped her attention to ambiguity—how objects tell different stories depending on where, and by whom, they are seen.Her projects often influence one another in unexpected ways: a scent becomes a sculpture; a sculpture becomes a video still; a video still becomes a performance. Rather than seeking stability, her practice inhabits the uncertain states between imitation and identity, ritual and decay, tenderness and danger. Through these slow, material transformations, Chen invites viewers into perceptual spaces where familiarity slips, and where irreversible change becomes a way of understanding the world.

The Cat Knows Who Bends（2025）

Shanzhai （2025）
After imitation, identity piles into a mountain

CV

Education

2024–Present
MFA, Film, Video, New Media, and Animation
School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), USA
Research areas: experimental moving image; cross-media installation and ceramic sculpture; sensory and embodied perception; surveillance, spectatorship, and spatial media.

2020–2024
BA, Art and Technology
Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), Beijing, China
Graduation Project: “Grit in the Data” — an interactive installation examining visual feedback systems, viewer position, and the mediation of perception in digital environments.

Research & Artistic Interests

Experimental and essay film with a focus on perception, spectatorship, and narrative instability.

Media archaeology and digital decay as evidence of memory, disappearance, and technological residue.

Cross-media sculpture and ceramic processes addressing postcolonial materiality, embodied history, and the politics of industrial production.

Transnational identity formation and Asian representation within contemporary media ecologies.

Sensory and olfactory communication as methods for exploring ecological memory and non-visual forms of knowledge.

Awards & Grants

2024–PresentChina Scholarship Council (CSC) National Government Scholarship for Overseas Study
2024 CAFA Excellent Graduation Project Award, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China
2023 Reconstruction, Selected Excellent Work, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China
2022 NING(Condensation), Selected Excellent Work, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China
2022 School Scholarship, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China

Exhibitions and Screenings

Group Exhibitions

2025 “Little, but BOLD”, Chicago Sculpture International (CSI) – Project Space Gallery, Chicago, USA
2025 seeing be seen, OSN – Experimental Portraiture, Chicago, USA
2024 YU E, What’s in a Name?, Chicago, USA
2024 Reachable After Touch, Milan Design Week – GAC, Via Tortona 16, Milan, Italy
2024 Yearning for, CAFA Art Museum, Beijing, China
2023 Oxygen Currency, Future Ecology Crisis, CAFA Art Museum, Beijing, China
2023 Return, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China
2023 Touchable Distance, CAFA Design Building, Beijing, China
2021 Gas Business Card, Yanjiao Biennale, Beijing, China

Teaching & Academic Experience

2024–Present
Graduate Teaching Assistant, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), USA
Courses: Appropriation and Remix; Olfactory Art; Stop-Motion Animation; Fundamentals of Film

2024
Jury Member, Iowa City International Documentary Film Festival, USA

2024
Contributor, Olfactory Art Workshop, Chicago, USA

2024
Invited Participant, North American Chinese Scholars & Artists Forum, Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the United States
Participated as a CSC-funded graduate representative in discussions on cross-cultural artistic practice and research.

2024
Invited Participant, Arts & Research Exchange Conference, North American Chinese Students Art Scholar Association, Beijing (Hybrid)
Engaged in academic dialogue on artistic research, transnational experience, and contemporary creative practices.

Languages

English | Mandarin Chinese (native; including Classical Chinese literacy)