Sidi Chen

July and November 2023 AiR

Sidi Chen (they/he) is a traveling queer artist whose practice addresses the intersectionality of the body, community space, and the land. For the creative process, Chen empathizes the body as a unit of measurement, a vessel of relationships, a repository of experience, and an instrument for creativity. Through his interdisciplinary research crossing arts to science and social movements, Chen's interested in how the embodied experience informs the relations and agencies of the bodies that are human, ecological, and planetary.

Chen graduated from the University of the Fraser Valley with BFA with the honor of distinction in 2018 and is a candidate for the Master of Fine Arts Program at Emily Carr University of Art + Design (September 2021). Chen has participated in a wide range of residencies, exhibitions, performances, and projects in North America. Sidi Chen is currently working as a practicing artist, an independent arts administrator, and a community worker in the historical Chinatown, on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations, known as Vancouver, BC.

Image: Courtesy of Sidi Chen

I had the pleasure to spend two months at the Similkameen Artist Residency at two
different seasons in July and November. The landscape of the valley, as well as the trees,
the river, the mountains, and the big horn sheep, is a tremendous inspiration for me to
explore the bodily relationships and the perspectives of witness in performance art and
interdisciplinary research. The log house is a comforting homebase for many delightful
meals and insightful inspirations, and I am grateful for the artists and the long-term
resident, Ali, for their care and warm company.

Sidi Chen, Testimonial