Jazz Szu-Ying Chen (b. 1990) is a Taiwanese artist residing in Taipei after a 10 year stint in EU/UK, and is currently one of the artists-in-residence at New Taipei City’s Banqiao 435 Art District. After graduating London’s Central Saint Martin’s with a Masters in Art & Science in 2015, Jazz has been consistently exhibiting in both Taiwan and abroad, with her commission for London’s Chelsea & Westminster Hospital A&E Wing permanently on show since 2015. Her most recent solo show was in February 2023 with Taipei’s Chini Gallery at Hybrid Art Fair in Madrid (by invitation of Taiwanese Cultural Bureau in Spain). She also regularly collaborates with the music scene, most recently with Berlin’s legendary record label and club TRESOR, for which she provide a series of illustrations for Surgeon’s “Shell~Wave” 2025 album.
Deeply influenced by the Gothic, sci-fi aesthetic, body modification and alternative subcultures, her work often includes depictions of animals, botany, and dissected human anatomy; combining elements of beauty and the grotesque with her intricate, yet distinctive, drawing practice. She also draws inspiration spanning from Neolithic archeological artefacts, to mythologies and folklore such as Nordic mythology and Chinese ancient folklore “Classics of Mountains and Seas.” The complex tableaux of such elements are meant to tell stories regarding the cultural clashes, her views on superstition, reflections from her Taiwanese roots, and the many facets of love.
And in her recent 2024 joint exhibition at Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, “Archeological Resonance”, she continued to refine her polished methodologies, specifically re-interpreting and rediscovering prehistoric Taiwanese artefacts and combining them with symbols derived from pockets of our contemporary cultures.