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Emilia Qian Shen

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 My sculptures explore ambiguous bodily forms that exist between human and non-human, object and organism, formation and dissolution. Rather than creating clearly defined or recognizable figures, I am interested in bodies not as solid, stable entities, but as forms in a state of metamorphosis—fluid and continuously transforming. I want these humanoid forms to resist fixed interpretation and remain open to multiple states of being.

Through my use of wool, silicone, foam, and latex, I create hybrid presences that evoke skin, flesh, organs, and strange life-forms that blur the internal and external. My process contributes to the sense of becoming in my work. I begin with a quick, rough, immediate sketch and maintain this tempo throughout the shaping of the work. 

These seemingly “random” abstract shapes further emphasize the sense of process. I seek to create a soft, visceral, and intimate quality. Through material and process, I create forms that feel simultaneously tender and grotesque, familiar and uncanny.

Color is significant. Pink appears again and again in my sculptures. It is a color that holds a strong duality, evoking softness, intimacy, and sweetness, while also suggesting discomfort. These fleshy tones make my creatures appear like unfinished humans or newly emerging beings. What I am describing here is not a narrative, but a condition of existence—an uncertain state of life suspended between categories.

Instead of presenting the body as stable and self-contained, I question what happens when forms slump, lean, collapse, or require support. This allows the sculptures to exist as vulnerable, incomplete, and shifting presences rather than fixed objects. In these forms, I blur the boundary between inanimate matter and living presence, allowing static structures to appear strangely animate, as if they are caught in the middle of becoming.

My work rethinks what a body can be, where its boundaries begin and end, and, ultimately, how identity might exist beyond fixed human-centered definitions. Through soft, grotesque, and metamorphic forms, I imagine new states of being that are unfinished, undefinable, and constantly becoming.




CV

Emilia Qian Shen

Emilia Qian Shen

Instagram / qianshen003@gmail.com

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