Yanxin Chen

Abigale Chen has a BA in Branding Design from Guangdong and Hamburg. She interned at Tencent Technology and A Thousand Plateaus Art Space. Finding herself moving between a commercial practice & conceptual art interest.

The projects on show investigate three sites, her hometown of Chengdu, London and her grandmother's home in an old town. She explores these sites through the lens of personal and social isolation. Reflecting, observing and documenting the emptiness of a city throughout the pandemic in a visual diary. As a personal project investigated her relationship with her grandmother's now abandoned home which shows a wrecking bond to her old self as well, working with family and home pictures and her own childhood and sentimental memories.

Experimental Photography Practice in isolation

As she moved back to London in 2021, everything seems in chaos because of the continuous COVID. Through writing daily reflections and taking photography through observation around the city, she conveys visual messages and brings life fragments though these unprecedented moments together.

She has been on a personal journey starting from 2020, living in a city isolated in lockdown has not been easy, living within the confinement of a 15 squares big room after the first lockdown in London. It forced her to look more inward and stops for a while.

She later brings in a lot of colour and graphic style in 2021, although depression seems like complete Darkness. Right after recovery, those are the stepping stones of her final imagery exploration including other elements in isolation of London.

In her work, she constantly talks about the loneliness within people and herself, she always gets into the paradox of “No man is an island” or maybe, Everyone is an island. And her visual style system really builds up because of the COVID, it’s also about getting used to the Impermanence as life continues..

ZINE — This is a Visual Documentary E-book, also a ZINE about this art-making journey and urban isolation life during the 3rd lockdown in London.

My Visual Diary during COVID

and through recording my one-month observation

about the London cityscape and people in isolation,

it leads me to an Experimental video that

Everyone would hopefully find peace with.

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Moving Image / Digital Prints / Photography

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Limitless

After a breakdown of my childhood memory, I use some visual narrative to trace back my lost childhood soul. Which unfold through the details and the combination of the objects and the old home scene. Now the room is completely GONE.

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Photography

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Limitless

Community hometown Nostalgia Physical Systems And Value

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Photography

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KALEIDOSCOPE — An experimental film with Hung music. I have some experience in moving image and sound, in the beginning, I used some popular pop songs as background music, But then this time I try the "Hung" music which is from Germany to vibe with mysteriously with the images. Through image-making, I don’t use much traditional graphic skill. But more like to explore what I didn’t learn before. And I trying to learn more Interdisciplinary knowledge by using remote learning in RCA.

KALEIDOSCOPE - COLLECTION — Static kaleidoscope pictures display, let the details of the picture in gallery showcase, in the static way those overlapping details and space presents a rich narrative form and atmosphere even without sound, and let the audience immersed in this journey, also learn to find the beautiful decorative details around everyday life and trigger reconstruction of senses and better connecting with the living environment.

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Photography / Experimental video

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Limitless

abstract Living Materials Moving image Moving Image Collage psychology of space Uniformity Unique

Daydreaming leads to

SPACES / IMAGINATION / CREATIVITY / REST

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Digital Photopragh / Sculpture

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Limitless

Blue/Green Colour glazes Creative Methodology Dream take physical rest on scooter

From the extension of Daydreaming,

Silence of London and my favourite colour combination.

And interestingly it happened before the Pandemic.

But still got a feel of isolation when I review this.

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Moving image

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Limitless

Colour Light Installation London Loneliness Silent Uniformity

Yanxin Chen

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Royal College of Art