Mind Shreds

Since 2004, I have been making “magazine clothes,” which are made of old magazines. My idea is to deconstruct and reconstruct the shredded magazine pages, giving a meaning and content to my “magazine clothes.” There is a certain containment and embodiment of society within the human form. The human form is a language that shapes our body into a statement and representation of our thinking and behavior. It represents our individuality free from society’s constraint. I focus on “wearable art,” and create “body sculptures,” both of which examine the relationship between clothes and media, and our consumption of disposable commodities. Through these hidden symbolic languages of magazines, we learn about communication.

Movana Chen

Movana Chen, Deconstructing, 2004-2008. Magazine paper, 5 meters (length) x 3 meters (width). Courtesy of Pékin Fine Arts.

Since 2004, I have been making “magazine clothes,” which are made of old magazines. My idea is to deconstruct and reconstruct the shredded magazine pages, giving a meaning and content to my “magazine clothes.” There is a certain containment and embodiment of society within the human form. The human form is a language that shapes our body into a statement and representation of our thinking and behavior. It represents our individuality free from society’s constraint.

I focus on “wearable art,” and create “body sculptures,” both of which examine the relationship between clothes and media, and our consumption of disposable commodities. Through these hidden symbolic languages of magazines, we learn about communication. We learn an alternative way to read and explore art as a dialogue between visual languages and viewers, a way to appreciate diverse cultures. I want to discover different ways to “wear” one’s identity, to experiment and play with the notion, to create new opportunities for exchange among cultures and personalities.

The reconstructed paper pieces represent wishes, and are transformed into meanings about daily life. Art then connects with life in an understandable way, which becomes a focus as well as a sharing of lives in various ways by different people. This is one of my developments to allow the viewer to look at things sideways, to discover, to challenge, to be unique.