Amy Hsu Tzu Chen
Amy Hsu Tzu Chen specialises in handcrafting vessels using techniques passed down by female artisans—such as basketry, embroidery, patching, and felting—which she reclaims as powerful forms of resistance and storytelling. Her practice intentionally positions these female-related crafts as catalysts for social and cultural change. Through an intuitive process that honours instinct and emotion, Chen creates abstract, metaphorical forms, offering a poetic lens into the collective female psyche—its traumas, dreams, and inner landscapes. She is currently developing interactive haptic and sonic experiences that subvert gender norms, inviting audiences into sensory rituals that challenge and reimagine traditional power dynamics.
Exploring the Soft Resilience Within is an ongoing body of research and experimentation that merges traditional hand-making techniques historically associated with female artisans—such as weaving, looping, coiling, crochet, and braiding—with unconventional, malleable materials including galvanized wire, metallic twist ties, and chenille stems.
Driven by an instinctive fascination with the interplay of softness and strength—a duality Chen perceives as the essence of feminine resilience—this open-ended, intuitive practice reimagines familiar craft processes to create sculptural forms that embody pliability, tension, and rich tactile complexity. These works seek to subvert conventional expectations of “female” craft, serving instead as material expressions of an unyielding, alluring feminine force.
Through a spontaneous, process-led approach that resists rigid technical constraints, the exploration opens up dialogues between material and method, tradition and innovation, structure and spontaneity—uncovering new and unexpected possibilities within the language of often undervalued “women’s work.”
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