
Sunny Moxin Chen’s work traces the shifting relationship between internal emotional landscapes and external geographies, shaped by movement, neurodivergent perception, and transnational lived experience.
Spent her early childhood in Moscow (RU) before moving to Beijing (CN), where she was raised by a single mother who is a self-taught painter and practiced Buddhism. She later attended a Christian high school in Northern California and eventually migrated to the U.S. East Coast.
Rooted in the Taoist concept of Dao, Chen practice embraces dualities—material and spiritual, abstract and figurative, chaotic and harmonious. Chen integrates Chinese ink, bold pigments, and everyday materials such as tea leaves, flower petals, and fragments of music, allowing these elements to converge into dynamic, layered spaces where memory, sensation, and place intersect. Her work transcends fixed geography, expanding narratives of identity through geometric and biomorphic forms that function as vessels bridging the organic and the artificial.
Shaped by continual migration and immersion in diverse cultures, movement becomes both a lived condition and a method. Through an intuitive, tactile approach grounded in emotional cartography, Chen explores notions of home, belonging, and spiritual presence within physical space.
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Sunny Moxin Chen (b. Moscow, RU) is a Chinese multidisciplinary artist, educator, and curator who lives and works in Queens, NY. Chen has exhibited at Harper’s Gallery (NYC), Half Gallery (NYC), ART021 Beijing (CN), Zhejiang Saili Art Museum (CN), Soul Art Center (CN)Erie Art Museum (PA), SOIL Gallery (Seattle), Yiwei Gallery (Los Angeles), Abigail Ogilvy Gallery (Boston), Morgan Lehman Gallery (NY), Fowler-Kellogg Art Center (NY), and Distillery Gallery (Boston), among others.
Chen has participated in numerous artist residencies, including Vermont Studio Center (2025) with support from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship, Soaring Gardens (PA), and Chautauqua Institution (NY). Chen holds an MFA in Painting from Boston University and a dual BFA in Painting and Studio for Interrelated Media from Massachusetts College of Art & Design.