Fu Lien
Medium: Mixed Media Studio Location: 43-50, 11 St., - Studio# 209 Phone: 646-2662186 Email: melodyfulien@gmail.com Website:: X Artist Bio: Short Biography Born and educated in Taipei, Taiwan, Fu C.W. Lien is an art worker practicing art education, studio work and writing. In 1980s, she worked as an assistant researcher in the Taipei Fine Arts Museum and became an assistant professor in Tamkang University after she studied her B.A. and MFA degree in America. In 1992, she was granted a Fulbright scholarship and returned to the United States to complete the Ph.D. program in art history at the City University of New York, Graduate Center focusing on contemporary feminist art. In Taiwan, She was involved with the influential feminist group "Awakening" in Taipei and engaged in establishing first Taiwan's Co-op gallery: Space II. In her art practice, she attempts to incorporate experience in studio work into her feminist art scholarship and vice versa. She held several individual shows and group shows with other women artists there. In US, she had individual show in Art Studio, TX, group shows in Blue Mountain Gallery, Chelsea and Queens Museum, NYC. Artist Statement: Love of Labor, Art of Craft By Fu Chiawen Lien Long Island City artists open studio, May 20 to 21, 2023 Let me just explain the title of my statement-or say, the thesis of my artistic endeavor. I believe people make art out of love. I cannot imagine how many people were saved by making art, out of their suffering, chaos, depression, denial or even death. One of my artist friends said, " By making that act of painting, it means saying 'yes!' to life." "Labor of Love" in not something new. I should attribute my title to one of the exhibition named "Labor of Love" curated by the late director Marcia Tucker in New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York in 1996. In that show, Tucker focused on the exploration of issue of craft in (as) art and art in(as) craft. As someone I admire and feel the kindred spirit in the vast contemporary art world, Tucker, aside from her interest in feminist art, has always managed to present the cutting-edge issue in art and maintained a refreshing alternative stance in her curatorial practice. Even as a practicing art historian and artist myself, I often feel speechless in front of an art work based tremendously on the labor of craft such as Liza Lou's five-year beading project of Kitchen in that show and the show in Whitney Art Museum "Charles LeDray:workworkworkworkwork." The sheer beauty of the handicraft and the profound reverence of the labor make us believe "An art work is worth a thousand of words." Therefore, I reversed the phrase of "labor of love" to "love of labor" and plus "Art of Craft" to further argue for my engagement in exploring the boundary of art and craft. I can state numerous reasons both from intuition to intellect to explain my interest in this issue. To name just a few, my awareness of the feminist art shaped and re-affirm my love of decoration and handicraft in (as) art. The study of Heidegger's "thinking hand" and Howard Gardener's theory of "bodily intelligence" provide me deeper understanding of this particular way of making and thinking about art. Here, we are not just addressing the general issue of craftsmanship in all kinds of art, but particularly the value of handicraft from folk art, vernacular context, ethnic identity, female tradition and thousand of years human practice of craft. Then, we can further propose the provocative question that "Whether a beautiful quilt can be as great as a Picasso?" as raised by 1970s feminist artists. I would like to thank LIC Arts Open for giving me this great opportunity. All images and text copyright Fu Lien