< ECU Directory

Sichen Grace Chen

Sessional Faculty

Availability:

Education:

BFA, Illustration
Rhode Island School of Design
MFA
ECU

Bio

Sichen Grace “SG” Chen is a painter/illustrator, artist-researcher, and educator with a practice that spans between commercial illustration, gallery exhibitions, public art and community engagement. Together with students, she offers a holistic curriculum that combines inquiry-based learning, conceptual rigour and skill-building. She is passionate about investigating interpersonal and ecological relationships through saturated colour and layered textures. She is the co-founder and creative director of Atelier Aloera, a research-oriented climate collective and artist group.

Websites:

Research Interests

SG’s research centres on water and its connection to painting, climate change, membranes and embodiment. Using additive and subtractive painting methods, such as glazing, staining and wiping with rags, her paintings possess chromatic depth and luminosity through various thin, translucent layers of paint. This approach influences her illustrated works, which explore memory, psychology, environmental change and everyday life. Beyond the classroom, SG collaborates with fellow artists, scientists, climate activists and community leaders to synthesize interdisciplinary projects supporting urban waterways.

Courses

Course Name Department Course Code Term
Social Science SOCS 201 26/FA

Description

This course guides students through a series of theoretical engagements to promote their abilities to articulate subject positions in support of creative practice. The course draws on a contemporary survey of unique theoretical references to investigate an interrelated set of concerns that includes: language, signification, representation, history, ideology, epistemologies, ontologies, difference, emergence, technology, and new conceptions of ecology. Students are challenged to engage course resources in terms of their own life experiences and to discover ways in which they can theorize their environments as creative practitioners.

Pre-requisites

No prerequisites.

Social Science SOCS 201 26/FA

Description

This course guides students through a series of theoretical engagements to promote their abilities to articulate subject positions in support of creative practice. The course draws on a contemporary survey of unique theoretical references to investigate an interrelated set of concerns that includes: language, signification, representation, history, ideology, epistemologies, ontologies, difference, emergence, technology, and new conceptions of ecology. Students are challenged to engage course resources in terms of their own life experiences and to discover ways in which they can theorize their environments as creative practitioners.

Pre-requisites

No prerequisites.