Skyler Chen

Skyler Chen’s paintings weave together stories of migration, family, history, and queer identity in Taiwan.
    In many of his paintings, Chen incorporates references to historical and personal events that reveal his ongoing reflection on Taiwan’s modern history and the struggles for queer emancipation. His grandparents and parents lived through Taiwan’s Martial Law period (1949–1987), during which the Kuomintang government enforced strict control over civil liberties. In his painting Courage Across Generations, a photo of his granduncle, a victim of the 228 Incident, is carried by one of the figures in a scene resembling a traditional Taiwanese street. In another painting, Chen depicts the cover of Crystal Boys, a queer novel by Pai Hsien-Yung, published in the 1980s in Taiwan and China, and in several other languages such as English and French.
    After moving to the United States to study art, Chen turned to painting to communicate and express a deep yearning shaped by migration and personal history.