about

My name is Sal Chen. I am an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and educator from NYC.

Through my work I explore: the connection between inner landscapes and outer worlds, the link between individual and collective psyches, and expanding concepts of kinship, ecologies, and body.

I grew up in NYC, in a working class, intergenerational, immigrant family.

I encountered racism, sexism, misogyny, and violence throughout my childhood, both within the home and in the world around me.

As a teen, I was guided to an LGBTQIA center in the East Village, where I discovered creative community and was introduced to process-oriented art-making through an expressive arts therapy group. There, I was able to connect to my voice, to my authentic self, and to those around me.

It was a complex journey to piece together my intersectional identity as a queer, neurodivergent, Asian American femme.

Now, as an adult, I work as a teaching artist, serving communities around the city and developing programming focused on cultivating connection and creativity.

My work also explores shadow material, what is hidden, what is taboo, areas of collective anger and shame.

There is a line I wrote, a sentiment I wanted to express to my family and ancestors: “It may have once been safer for us to remain silent, to be unseen and unheard— but we have reached a collective boiling point, a moment on this timeline, where it is more dangerous to shrink and be silent. Instead, our survival, my survival, requires that I claim voice and space.”

Anytime any one of us does the work of diving into ourselves, to explore and understand the shifting landscape of inner worlds, we often bring back lesson, memory, and medicine that can be applied like a balm to a collective wound- with tangible, ripping effect on the shifting landscape of our outer worlds.

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