I am a research-driven visual artist and cultural practitioner based in Guangzhou, China. My practice combines moving image, writing, and performative approaches to explore how identity, intimacy, and cultural values are continuously shaped and reconfigured within specific social and historical contexts.

Since 2020, orchids have become a central methodological and conceptual focus in my work. At the core is becoming orchid, an ongoing, practice-driven inquiry into fluid identities, queer ecology, and alternative forms of kinship and coexistence. Drawing on writing, observation, and speculative practices, this research investigates how subjectivity and relationality can be generatively reimagined beyond normative social and biological frameworks.

Orchid Pavilion (蘭亭無序), a long-term project initiated by Chen, serves as a situated research field informing becoming orchid. Rooted in contemporary China, it combines artistic research, cultural and conceptual translation, and community-based learning, providing a generative context from which specific conceptual threads are abstracted and further developed.

Recent research engages the Chinese ink orchid as a lens to revisit the aesthetics of the junzi (君子), the noble or exemplary “Gentleman” in Confucian thought, historically celebrated among male literati, and its gendered implications. This exploration extends my broader inquiry into how cultural ideals are embodied, naturalized, and contested, offering a generative reflection on identity, ethics, and relationality.