Millie Chen is the CU Art Museum’s 2018 artist-in-residence. As part of this biennial residency program, artists are invited to mine CU Boulder’s creative and intellectual resources to create new artwork while interacting with faculty and students. Millie will be in residence September 11 through October 12, 2017, and the exhibition Millie Chen: Four Recollections will open February 1, 2018 and remain on view until July 21, 2018.
Millie Chen: Four Recollections features a new installation conceived during her artist-in-residence at CU Boulder alongside three large-scale drawing installations created between 2015 and 2017. Significant events of injustice and social unrest reshape Millie’s memory of her formative years. A Slinky, bell bottoms, psychedelic designs, among other cultural touchstones of the 1970s, are integrated in her graphic works with those of protest and human-perpetuated violence occurring around the world.
Millie’s new installation, egg MUSEUM, conveys the hidden histories of objects. Egg tempera studies of details extracted from a black-and-white photograph of her mother and grandmother taken in a field in China in 1939 are juxtaposed with objects in our collection. The artist is drawn to these objects because of their uncertain provenance and origins, speculating that they have come from areas associated with the Silk Road routes.
Artist-in-residence program and exhibition curated by Sandra Q. Firmin, director, CU Art Museum.
The artist-in-residence program and exhibition are generously supported by CU Boulder Student Arts and Cultural Enrichment fees, and CU Art Museum members.