What does it mean to be an Asian American today? Painter Susan Chen explores the multi-dimensional identity

Sitting for the painter Susan Chen is no ordinary experience. For one, she finds her models through social media community groups like Subtle Asian Traits, Subtle Asian Life NYC, Chinatowns of New York City, or NYC Yang Gang. For another, once she finds a suitable model, the five-hour painting session that later takes place determines what happens on the canvas. The conversation that unfurls between Susan and sitter leads the painting. Susan must multitask between listening to her sitter, responding to their musings through the canvas.

It’s the New York-based artist’s way of confronting her own fears and desires in every portrait. An exploration of identity and belonging, Susan’s evocative paintings question her own identity and address the lack of Asian Americans in Western portraiture. “Sometimes it’s just part of your identity,” she tells It’s Nice That on why she became an artist. “It’s just who you are – fulfilling your souls and desires – versus a job.” For Susan, “most artists don’t really have a choice. When they’re not making art, they’re depressed,” so making art becomes a kind of one-way street.

Granting visibility to her community through her portraiture, Susan’s paintings wholly come about through conversations with her sitters. When she first approaches the canvas, she has no preconceived notions of what will fill it. Though it’s a long process (with a lot of organisation and email coordinating) to find the sitters, it’s imperative to make them feel comfortable, safe and happy. She likens it to working on a film set where the right cast, mood, and weather have to align to make the scene happen.

When it came to the painting Yang Gang, the challenge was multiplied as it was her first group portrait painting. She met the group through various online support groups for Andrew Yang; an American entrepreneur and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate. As one of the first Asian Americans to run for president, the support group consisted of several individuals who’d recently engaged in politics. In turn, the painting explores Asian American identity and before she started work on the highly detailed painting, Susan attended quite a few Andrew Yang canvassing events to “better understand the varying perspectives on how people felt towards an Asian American running for president.”

Halfway through working on the picture, Andrew Yang dropped out of the race. Susan recalls the moment. She was in her studio, thinking “oh no, what do I do now?” The supportive vision for her painting was disrupted due to these real-time events and all of a sudden, she made the decision to change the intention of the work. The painting was no longer about cheering on Andrew Yang, but rather, “a feeling of lost hope.” She changed the colours, bringing in dreamy blue hues hinging to a sense of nostalgia, as a result, it questioned what could have been if Andrew hadn’t dropped out.

It’s one of many works on display at Meredith Rosen Gallery where Susan is currently exhibiting her first solo show. On display until 19 September, the exhibition also includes several portraits which hide little glimmers of the sitter’s life in the subject matter. A portrait of Pranab for instance – a second-generation American who has grown up in the States – hints to the Nepalese lessons he was teaching himself in preparation for a long-overdue homecoming to Nepal. Elsewhere, at the time of their sittings, Zhi was reading a book on the immigrant experience while Keliem (a recent graduate) shared his recent CV with Susan for job-hunting advice.

She’s even attempted self-portraiture in recent months. Drastically changing her practice when the pandemic hit, Susan’s usual practice of painting sitters went out the window with only a few days’ notice and she was left with a subject that she felt rather uncertain about: herself. “There’s something very uncomfortable about looking at yourself in the mirror for long hours, so I decided to paint a nude portrait of myself,” she says. “There are so many nude paintings of women in art history, depicted as symbols of beauty.” But when Susan flipped this lens on herself, the nude “felt nothing like painting about beauty. If anything,” Susan reveals, “if felt like I was staring myself head-on and asking: Well, how insecure are you?”

In turn, Susan’s first solo show is all about asking questions, and confronting a complicated, delicate and often misunderstood experience; similar to the Asian American experience in her eyes. Her paintings actively take part in the discussion of what it means to be from the east Asian diaspora today. From the stereotypes, the model minority myths, the perpetual foreigner, the supposed economic threat, the racial melancholia, assimilation and so on, Susan’s works voice a myriad of concerns that “we are all trying to figure out together.” She finally goes on to say: “I want my paintings to be part of this ongoing discussion and dialogue, within the Asian American community, but also outside of it. Beyond highlighting a yearning – for acceptance from society but also self-acceptance – that seems to be so present amongst the Asian American population, I also just want to bring a little bit of joy and escapism by sharing my art with the world during these tumultuous times.”