Eye Exercise (In Wind) features a CG animation of the artist's younger self-avatar in a school uniform and leadership badge, playfully rolling her eyes against a backdrop of wind turbines.

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: 

Protect your eyes. Strive to be an excellent Angel of Light.

保护好眼睛。争取做一名优秀光明天使。

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.