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Pei Shan Chiang (Taiwan, 1983) is a Taiwanese visual artist currently based in Mexico. Having first studied Materials Engineering and Psychology at university, Chiang’s artistic beginnings came at the late age of 28 — although she did start studying Chinese calligraphy since she was a child. She started her creative endeavors not due to her fascination with art, but due to her fascination with human life. She has since attended a variety of workshops and courses at different institutes, including the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City.
Chang’s work has been exhibited at venues such as the José Clemente Orozco Gallery of the Department of Cultural Dissemination of UNAM, the Senate of the Republic and the House-Studio Museum of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, as well as at private institutions such as the FEMSA building within the Santa Fe campus of the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM), the Cedros Foundation, the Aguafuerte gallery and the Arte Visual México gallery. Her work also appears on different catalogs such as Flamantes and Artes Proyecta. Chang has also taken part in a number of documentaries regarding life and culture in Mexico, produced by different Asian TV stations.
Profunud Embrace 2019 oil on canvas 120 x 120 cm 47 x 47 inches
Give Us A Reason To Die 2019 oil on canvas 100 x 150 cm 39 x 59 inches
The Day For Soup 2019 oil on canvas 90 x 90 cm 35 x 43 inches
The Day For Soup 2019 oil on canvas 90 x 90 cms 35 x 43 inches
The Day For Soup 2019 oil on canvas 90 x 110 cm 35 x 43 inches
Viva The Manhood 2018 oil on canvas 210 x 180 cm 80 x 66 inches
The Kiss 2016 Oil on Canvas 150 x 150 cms
Those Children I had 2015 Oil on Canvas 112 x 185 cms
As If They Were Father And Son Oil on Canvas 2017 200 x200 cms
The Wedding 2017 Oil on Canvas 130 x 130 cms
At present, Chang is working on a series of paintings, locations and narrative texts that seek to find the actual human interrelation that arises from family and the illusions that emerge during the process of remorse; her work consists of static scenes from a world that is more vivid than the quotidian one. In the eyes of Chiang Pei Shan, creating is just a form of expression, one that allows her to relive and reinterpret her vital experiences. She does not consider herself an artist, but merely a survivor to have lived. Showing her work is her way of connecting with the world.
In this series, entitled “Desprendiéndome pieles abras∕zadas” (shedding off burnt/embraced skins), the central element are mixed feelings —especially those that are not that easy to decipher, yet are the ones that really control us. The series seeks to show all sides of emotion, without particular inclination for any of them but with a fascination for the edges, vertices, ridges and hopeless angles: the artist is a waste picker of abandoned impressions. The main essence of her Weltanschauung is the avidity for living, no matter what kind of being, nor under which condition.
This work intends to understand the inter-human relation from a wide variety of human behaviors: the lived past tangled with the present; necessity reappeared in the form of remorse; the way in which true feelings are revealed as time goes by; the purification of the ego mixed with time, space, sensations, feelings, memory and unconscious –extrapolating the optical sense to the psychological one– reflection; the instinctive self-destruction within human beings; the dark side.
The most potent strength comes from illuminating the lugubrious part, that part which almost no one dares to discover, not because of its blackness, but because of its vigor. The dark side is that which inspires, which attracts because of its blood-curdling beauty, which wishes to transmit to the spectator the urge to defy oneself, even when if it proves uncomfortable. Discomfort forces one to recognize oneself. It is a flaunter of self-revelation and understanding, a sensory experience, as much for the author as for the spectator. In the end, there is no side that is always dark.
Each work is part of a story, it is the final stage where the characters that come out of one-self perform. They relive one’s disruption, and then, they create a new story; they will never go back to being the same ones the author thought. When the artist creates a work, she wants to make herself believe she lives inside it, yet the canvas always draws an edge to remind her that that is not the only place she lives at. There is a splitting within the creation. Between a Chiang Pei Shan that lives inside and the Chiang Pei Shan that paints, there is a switch that allows the difference: the canvas or space filled by a work that, physically, traces an area that prevents the artist’s sensibility from overflowing. The artist invents a world in which she could stay, at least temporarily. She creates not merely to understand, but to open a new world, where besides there being room for the feelings of yesteryear, there is also room for a revolution of such feelings, a new way to be able to exist, to relive. When Chiang Pei Shan is creating, she is approving her own existence once and again. To live is to have a new way of feeling, the desire to exist is a longing for finding and understanding all feelings. Since there is not a feeling that is not part of you, all feelings are a sign of existence in one way or another.
Works of art are above all records of events that lived in the mind of the creator and then set off to find other spaces where to reinterpret themselves. For the spectator, as much as for the creator, art must be an experience, not an objective. The artist expects different reactions from others, that is one of the objectives for which she creates.
Relive. Reinterpret. Re-exist.