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2023

Downtown Haliburton Sculpture Exhibition

$2,800.00

Orange Bloom

Kristi Chen

Orange Bloom

Rattan Reed & Steel


Orange Bloom is a sculpture that showcases the amalgamation of traditional craft practices and industrialized mediums. The basket is hand woven coated with an orange silicone finish attached to a welded curved steel armature. It is shaped into an organic form mimicking moments of a flower blooming. Utilizing lost basketry techniques in conjunction with manufactured finishes introduces the hybridization of time period and cultures. The basket vessel symbolizes the ancestral past while the silicone rubber coating reflects the current currency. The combination between the woven and the silicone rubber changes and evolves into another medium.


Kristi Chen


Parts of my identity are embedded in the pieces I created, not a portrait, but a sense of my fragmented existence. 


As a Toronto based multi-disciplinary cultural producer and artist, I am interested in themes of intergenerational, ancestral archives and how it relates to experiences of the diaspora. I was raised in Singapore, then the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong (SAR) which has made me cognizant of constant migration, influencing the subject matter and materiality in my practice. I seek to find comfort within my diasporic experience using sculptural forms to communicate identity. Imaginative creatures and dystopic, surreal environments are drawn from notions of my collective and personal experiences. Basket-weaving and smell are a big part of my sculptures, as it is a lost technique in my paternal side of the family.  It is important for me to address cross-cultural perspectives, trans-generational traumas and re-interpretations of ancient Asian ideologies. I currently use traditional weaving techniques with synthetic materials to speak towards the relationship of the ancient and the anthropocene. 

Kristi has a BF in Sculpture/Installation from OCAD University and has been exhibiting her work in group and solo shows in the GTA region since 2018. 


Artist Contact Information

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