Born in Guang Dong, China and raised in New York, Gigi Chen attended the School of Visual Arts in NYC. There, she received her MFA in traditional animation and created award winning animated shorts. Gigi has exhibited in New York at Deitch Projects as part of the ARTSTAR reality based television program. She has also shown at the Queens Museum of Art in New York and the FUEL Collection and the Knapp Gallery in Philadelphia. Gigi currently works and resides in New York. Artist Statement: My paintings are unconventional self portraits that explore my obsessive yet ambivalent feelings towards being an artist. This neurotic duality, coupled with lack of sleep, is personified as characters that are at once sweet, kind and cuddly, then dangerous and shifty. They, along with the human figures, are interchangeably protagonists and victims, winners as well as losers. Collectively, they illustrate the struggle and rewards of the daily artistic practice itself. *Note: Artist's portrait photo by Reid Harris Cooper: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rhcooper