Artist Blog

Every week an artist whose single image was published by Der Greif is given a platform in which to blog about contemporary photography.

"The funnier I am, the sadder I am, and the more serious my work can be. The joke is the repressed passion and desire to invoke meaning and to be understood. It is not simply a trigger to laugh at the dinner table. It is a far more existential laughter, a bitter joke that speaks of struggling with who you are, of not having a clear perception, or the lack of strength to create and build meaning, but full of meaning all the same, as it tells the story of searching. " Sophie Tianxin Chen was born in China and resided there until the age of 15. She has lived in three countries and five different cities since then. In 2010, Chen received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Film, Video and New Media and later in 2014 received a Master of Fine Arts degree from University of California, Los Angeles in Photography. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California, United States. Chen's practice is an active response to the constant relocating experience that she had at an early age. Her work explores the aloofness of identity in a post-colonial world and questions how meaning is always shifting according to the cultural and language context that one is in. To view more works of Chen, please visit her website: http://www.tianxinchen.com/