During the free expo program TRaces, we invite Rotterdam artists, from emerging to established, to use our building as a stage for ongoing exhibitions of interdisciplinary work that connect with the city of Rotterdam and its residents. The lobby is the exhibition space where these invited Rotterdam artists leave their mark! Is Theater Rotterdam open? Then you can always drop in during the expo period. For the Feeling Curious?-edition of TRaces we welcome Linhuei Chen.

Linhuei Chen (b. 1981) is a Taiwanese Dutch artist based in Rotterdam. Her work  investigates how migration impacts transcultural individuals’ notions of home and cultural hybridity within the discourse of transculturalism influenced by contemporary migration and diaspora. She explores this topic through personal experiences and collective memory/ideas on migration, Dutch colonisation in Taiwan and cultural hybridity, providing perspectives between East Asia and Europe. 
 
Chen uses painting as the primary medium to express her personal experiences and collective ideas based on social research and participatory workshops. She often combines paintings with drawings, objects or installations for diverse viewing experiences. Chen graduated from the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague in 2019 and holds Master’s degrees in Engineering and Law from Taiwan and various European countries. Her artworks are part of the Fenix Museum of Migration and Lam Museum collections. During the festival she’ll show her work: Third Space 
 
Third Space is the concept developed by Homi Bhabha to describe the hybrid cultural identity which emerges from the interweaving elements of different cultures. Bhabha posits hybridity as a liminal or in-between space, where the ‘cutting edge of translation and negotiations’ occurs (Bhabha 1996). During the process of this artistic research, she realized that all the segments in my works are a journey in the third-space, where her native culture and memories meet with her experience of Western culture. They collide and merge with each other, while she examines with a magnifying glass the Western culture with one hand and examines her past with a monocular with my other hand. She navigates in this space to find answers to questions of who she is and where is home to which she could return? 

Grand opening:

The TRaces: Linhuei Chen expo will kick-off before the performance This is Not an Embassy (Made in Taiwan) on 28 sept at 19:30.