陈杰
JUSTINE ELLEN CHEN
“As though looking through a dusty window pane, the past is something [he] could see but not touch, and everything [he] sees is blurred and indistinct”
Justine Ellen Chen is a genderqueer, Chinese-American filmmaker and photographer working in Los Angeles. Currently, Chen is most interested in exploring displacement and dissonance of their identity within the context of their upbringing in a Southern California immigrant family, as well as exploring the fluid and temporal nature of archive.
In their eyes, this personal ethos adds to their work as production designer and art director (ADG Local 800), allowing them to bring texture, memory, and emotion to the spaces they design and curate.
Education:
USC School of Cinematic Arts - Film/Production BFA
RESUME AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST.
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In my personal artistic practice, I have been working to depict displacement and dissonance as it relates to my own intersections of identity. Being a Chinese-American person but lacking a clear understanding or connection to my heritage, or being an able-bodied femme but constantly struggling to navigate my femininity: these contradictions specify the complicated relationship within self, particularly while navigating a world in which normative binaries and Eurocentric ideals are still reinforced around me everyday.
I am interested in depicting the emotional isolation that permeates our interactions and relationships, and observe the ways in which we reflect and contend with the dissonance we may experience within those contexts. However, with this recognition, I hope to create work that ultimately provides comfort and familiarity, and to fully diagnose the strange and unique belonging that can exist within the contradictions that haunt us.
JUSTINE ELLEN CHEN (2022)