Michelle Chan Collaboration
I’ve been fortunate to collaborate with Michelle Chan, a talented young artist who specializes in fabric and apparel as a way of exploring her cultural experience as a Chinese-American, the daughter of immigrants from Hong Kong. Her inventiveness and determination have been inspirational, along with her thoughtful and articulate means of expression. I hope you enjoy these images from our collaboration, and please note that our work was displayed on the Kansas City Crossroads Artboards, July-September, and featured in the 2023 Kansas City Flatfile and Digital File in the H&R Block Artspace at the Kansas City Art Institute. Read more about this collaboration in my blog, and fine further information about Michelle and our. work together farther down the page.
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About the collaboration:
Michelle Chan and I met during the course of attending the Artist Inc. program in Kansas City. Finding that we mutually admired each other’s work, we got together a few months after the program for a photo shoot, hoping to capture with motion-blur photography the energy and movement suggested by her fascinating cross-cultural apparel.
I couldn’t wait to see what long-exposure techniques would do with the fringes and dangles that characterize both cultures expressed in her designs.
I’m very happy with what we achieved and the result has been lauded in three local exhibitions so far. I think the images are exciting from a purely visual standpoint, and they’re also emblematic of the universal truth that in the US, we’re almost ALL immigrants, trying to fit in while not losing track of where we came from.
About Michelle Chan:
“I incorporate mixed media fiber processes to create large scale sculptural objects and installations. My work addresses being an American-born Chinese. While growing up, I have felt like a perpetual foreigner to both to the United States and to my heritage; with the expectation of representing one or the other. From these experiences, I recreate consumer items into a hybrid or parody of Chinese and American culture to navigate the blurred space of being a part of both. Through this framework I create a space for viewers to contemplate the inequalities of Chinese and American relations.”
BFA - Kansas City Art Institute in Fiber and Art history, certificate in Asian Studies, 2018