■ Dura Mater — Jazz Szu-Ying Chen Solo Exhibition

2025.11.08-2025.12.07

▍Artist Talk

Nov. 8, Sat. 15:00

Speaker：

Jazz Szu-Ying Chen × CHU Feng-Yi (Independent Curator)

▍Opening

Nov. 8, Sat. 16:30 

▍Guest Lecture

Nov. 23, Sun. 15:00

Speaker：

Jazz Szu-Ying Chen × Stella Cheng (Art Advisor, Lecturer)

Dura Mater — Jazz Szu-Ying Chen Solo Exhibition

Text / Jazz Szu-Ying Chen

For my latest solo exhibition at Taipei’s CHINI Gallery, I present a series of works created between 2023 and 2025. Rather than following a single theme, this body of work stems from my introspections as a modern woman approaching her mid-thirties. It is a profoundly personal exhibition, yet one I hope others will also find relatable.

In these works, I continue my exploration of European medieval memento mori, weaving it together with mythology and reimagined archaeological “shell midden,” alongside ornate seashell objects. This extends from my 2024 joint exhibition with Kai-Chun Chiang at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Archeological Resonance. For me, art and life are inseparable—I cannot keep stories, interests, or fascinations apart from my practice. Within this body of work, audiences will encounter echoes of antique curiosities, occult motifs, and references to subcultures embedded in complex imagery.

The exhibition’s title, Dura Mater—Latin for “tough mother” and the outermost, hardest layer of the human skull—was inspired by Hailey Campbell’s book All the Living and the Dead. In it, Campbell reflects on mortality through encounters with workers engaged in all aspects of death, from funerary professionals to crime scene cleaners.

Through this lens, I wish to address the complexities of our contemporary, politically turbulent times (seen in works such as Divination and Hope, which grapple with the frightening uncertainty of the future), as well as more intimate concerns (muddy waters?) of womanhood and girlhood (as in In Between Demeter & Persephone). What does it mean today to be a woman in her thirties, particularly as an artist? What unique challenges do female-presenting adults encounter that their male counterparts do not? What subjects are acceptable to bring to the dinner table, and what remains taboo?

My works do not offer direct answers—nor do I yet claim to hold them myself. Instead, I invite viewers to contemplate these questions, to wander through the details of each piece, and to construct their own interpretations from the symbols and visual elements interlaced within.