Eye Exercise (In Spring) presents a 3D animation featuring the artist's younger self-avatar, dressed in Y2K style and rolling her eyes in front of a floral field in full bloom.

Part of the artist’s Eye Exercise series and a larger body of work, the animation alludes to the phenomenon of routine eye exercises in mainland Chinese classrooms. The childlike figure is framed by scrolling text, reminiscent of news tickers. 

Details woven into the artwork hint at the artist's Chinese American identity, drawing from her experiences and speculations with the complexities of cultural hybridity, memory and representation.

Frame Text: 

Treat eye exercises seriously for a field of bright vision. 

坚持认真对待眼保健操。眼睛一片明亮。

Carrie Chen is an artist and educator based in Los Angeles. Working with CGI animation, simulation technologies and media installation, she explores how digital figuration can be a poetic and multidimensional means to process and express ideas about embodiment, representation, ancestry and memory.

Spending time between the US and China, Chen’s practice involves examining non-western ontologies and narratives, while deconstructing and reconfiguring her relationship to her Chinese American identity and ancestry. Taking a phenomenological and transdisciplinary approach, she questions the structures of individual and collective subjectivities. She is interested in examining the entangled relationships between physical and virtual identities as they intersect culture, technology, representation and our future histories.

Chen currently teaches Visual Communication and Motion Design as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at USC’s Media Arts + Practice program, and is a lecturer at the Design and Technology department at Parsons School of Design. She has exhibited internationally at STRP Festival, Vellum LA, WeHo’s Moving Image Media Art Program and Epoch Gallery. She holds an MFA of Design Media Arts from UCLA, and a Bachelor of Science double majoring in Applied Psychology and Art History from NYU.