Taipa Village Cultural Association invites Macau artist Crystal W. M. Chan to exhibit her new collection of works which unveil her emotional connection with travel.

Subtropical Romance is an exhibition of new paintings exploring Crystal W. M. Chan ‘s personal relationship to this theme of travel and places turned into desires, of climates and atmospheres felt and remembered. These scenes evoke places, people and plants on the move. Like the tropics, they circulate in imaginations both personal and collective.

About Crystal Wai Man Chan 

Crystal Wai Man Chan is an artist born and raised in Macao whose practice includes painting and sound installation. She has studied and worked in Taiwan, Greece, and New York, earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the School of Visual Arts in New York and her Master of Fine Arts degree at Purchase College, State University of New York.

Affect and atmosphere are two recurrent elements in Chan’s artwork. In her paintings, isolated figures and desolate landscapes are drawn with expressive lines and brushstrokes. In her sound installations, field recordings from nature and urban environments are combined with improvised music played on both traditional and non-traditional instruments to create an otherworldly setting.

Growing up, Chan experienced Macao’s transition from Portuguese to Chinese rule and she has lived in various places herself. This cultural shift and change of identity led her to explore questions of identity and representation, the complexity of identity, as well as the prejudices and expectations it faces in society. Through her artwork, familiar yet blurred elements address the feelings of displacement and estrangement, provoking consideration of the relationship between humans and their environments.

Artist’s Statement 

There is a romance to the tropics. A story tourists tell others about their travels on the return home. They tell of distant beaches, exotic fruit and palm trees. These stories turn into fantasies and fictions we tell ourselves about the good life. Growing up in Macao, I never thought of it as part of that story but now an endless stream of tourists come to town to escape from familiar things and find paradise in an unfamiliar place.

Subtropical Romance is an exhibition of new paintings exploring my personal relationship to this theme of travel and places turned into desires, of climates and atmospheres felt and remembered. These scenes evoke places, people and plants on the move. Like the tropics, they circulate in imaginations both personal and collective.

-Crystal Wai Man Chan 

Sponsor: Cultural Development Fund of the Macao SAR