New Developments: Gender 3.0 by Hsiang-Ting Yen

Hsiang-Ting Yen
Specialty: Jewelry, utilizing modern technology and traditional Chinese aesthetics
Most Recent Exhibition: Thesis Exhibition Gender 3.0 (March – April 2012)
Upcoming Craft Show: Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show 2012

   Hsiang-Ting Yen has recently graduated with a Master of Fine Arts from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Now stepping out into the wide outdoors of the craft world, Yen has pioneered from the groundwork laid out by her thesis exhibition a new series of jewelry that is sassy and sophisticated.

Gender 3.0: Portraits, Andrej Pejic and Marlon Brando
of enamels, carbon steel, copper, glass beads, freshwater
pearl, and copper foil, 7" x 5" x .5", 2012.

    Yen's Gender 3.0 Brooch series has its roots in the various pieces of body sculpture and installation she created for her thesis exhibit, particularly her Portrait piece. Within a traditional painting frame, Yen embroidered faces of celebrities onto translucent fabric, then lined up every portrait diagonally so the viewer could see through every frame collectively. The composite image reflects the many interpretations of the masculine and feminine presented by the mainstream and historical media. For her newest incarnation of the Gender series, enameled panels with faces of famous persons are similarly arranged, like venetian blinds, as the centerpiece of an array of steel wire frames sprouting from the back like a Broadway sign. Yen creates these enameled portraits by first etching the outline of the portrait into the copper, then using enamel paint within the lines for the facial details. This is why the faces look like a sketch. Although depicting contemporary figures, the style seems to harken back to an earlier age. Turn of the century art movements, such as Arts & Crafts, Art Nouveau and Art Deco seem to contribute their design sensibilities to the piece. Because of this conjoining of past and present, the piece possesses a poignant nostalgia, almost a sense of deja vu. And that's besides challenging the viewer to re-examine stereotypes.

Gender 3.0: Portraits, Lady Gaga and Audrey Hepburn
of enamels, carbon steel, copper, glass beads, freshwater
pearl, and copper foil, 7" x 5" x .5", 2012.

    There's a sense of motion to the piece, evoking a look that the word glamorous could authentically be attributed to. One can imagine some sort of neo-Jazz Age flapper girl at leisure with one of these brooches. The piece seems to call up Tamara de Lempicka, from the abstraction of layered half faces, to the confluence of angularity and curvature of the brooches. These aspects resonate with the elements that makes Lempicka's work seem to sway through space. The variegation in the enameled portrait evokes the essence of the almost cubist folds in fabric that Lempicka lavishly draped her portrait subjects in. This gestalt is Yen's aesthetic in Gender 3.0.

Portrait sequence of fabric, thread, and acrylic, from thesis 
exhibition Gender 3.0, Savannah, Georgia.

    Soon showing at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show, where she has exhibited in years past as part of SCAD's student booth, Yen has successfully transformed her conceptual thesis exhibit into a beautiful and challenging style of jewelry. As a counterpoint to her In Bloom series, which will also be exhibiting at the show, Yen shows her strength in establishing unique branches of aesthetic, both bearing considerable merit. As Yen has shown in her past work, her exploration of these themes will surely yield diversity and success.