Primavera 春
Primavera 春 is a digital simulation in which the artist depicts herself at multiple life stages, all coexisting within a blossoming spring landscape. Using AI image augmentation apps, Chen generated "aged" versions of her portraits, synthesizing them with archival family images and avatar technology to create digital selves that span through time. These avatars interact dynamically in a sprawling flower meadow, where they engage in activities like dancing, running, swimming, observing and embracing, allegories of childhood, pleasure, beauty, and renewal.
By engaging with and recontextualizing visual pastiche found in Renaissance and Romantic period art, this work challenges and reorients established art-historical narratives – a body that has not been allowed to appear now owns the viewer's gaze.
As a meditation on time and existence, Primavera 春 invites viewers to engage with the notion of life as a cyclical journey with multiple, co-existing narratives permeated with ancestral echoes, both rooted in the past and extending into the future.
Debut at SKF/Konstnärshuset, curated by Ashik Zaman and Alida Ivanov.
Documentation by Sofia Runarsdotter.