Invidual residencies / Andorra
YEN-YU TSENG
From Monday, 6 February 2023 to Monday, 27 February 2023
Bio
TSENG Yen-Yu is a Taiwanese artist. Whose talent shows in visual art with old garments, waste textile and her own textile technique Wrapping, as the form of sculpture and installation. Before she received a MFA degree in 2015, her works have been selected for many international textile art events. Such as recent 11th Triennial of Mini-Textiles of Angers at Musée Jean-Lurçat et de la tapisserie contemporaine in France, and 10th International Fiber Arts X Biennial at Sebastopol Center for the Arts in the USA. Also, her oversea projects were all received grants from national and city governments and domestic foundations. After winning 16th Li Chun-Shan Visual Art Award in 2020, she has her forth and fifth solo exhibitions at Centre Materia and Centre d'art La Sarre in Canada this year.
Project
My proposal is a story about characters lived in La Massana. From local collective's memory and my resident experience, works are made as figure fabric sculptures, particularly by my innovation in textile art and puppetry together. There are also a talk about global textile art and a workshop about fabric sculpture skill for the public. Especially during my residency in February, I would fully like to collaborate with school teachers and join the big event La Massana Carnival.
This residency is supported by the National Culture and Arts Foundation of Taiwan.
I choose Faber Andorra because not too much Asian people know even understood it. Also, it is an only country of Catalan official language in the world. I am also curious its culture, is it may between Spanish and French. I understand the cultures may have affects on from neighborhood, because I am from an small oceanic island between different Asian countries.
The environment here is totally different with Taiwan, but I enjoyed it here, particularly I choose a right month to experience the snowy, rainy, windy and sunny days all together in February. Another landscape I preferred most is the trail along the river, it connects the sound, vision, smell with plants, rocks, stream even snow. La Massana is a lovely town, and here are 5 supermarkets nearby. The ski groups come in and go out everyday on the main street, but I find some quiet short-cut roads to go, and see local people walk and sport.
Moreover, I try to explore what lifestyles are here from the history to nowadays. When I visited two national museums, I met twice Cristina luckily. She is a passionate museum officer, and answered my questions about historical life objects of two museums. There are some CARISMA shops supported by local government, where I can find interesting old and used clothes, even toys an books. Because I usually use old clothes as material, and would also like to know what colors, textures or fashion styles of garments local people wore.
The most important thanks for Meri's management, I had been settle down well at Faber Andorra. I have opportunities to visit local two high schools. I met talent teachers, young students, and also textile carfters of textile workshop. It is good to find the inspiration when they try to learn my own "Wrapping" technique. The last thanks is Aminda, I showed my eleven new pieces of fabric figure dolls 'La Massana 1-11" to the public and the press at her Taranmana Gallery.
