

(photo credit: Weitao Wu @wu.made)
Sunny Moxin Chen (b. Moscow) is a Chinese multidisciplinary artist navigating diasporic and neurodivergent spaces. Based in New York City, they work across painting, sculpture, and site-specific installation to explore the porous boundaries between the personal and the public, the discarded and the sacred. Chen’s practice is intuitive and layered, rooted in tactile materials and emotional cartography. Drawing from their lived experience as a transnational individual, their work investigates the dynamics of home, belonging, and spiritual presence within physical spaces. By blending Chinese ink, paint, and everyday consumable materials—each carrying its own history and energy—Chen transforms memory into form. Geometric and biomorphic shapes emerge as vessels of significance, forming a visual language that bridges the organic and the artificial. Their compositions evoke introspection, inviting viewers to consider the interconnectedness of material and spirit, environment and identity.
Chen recently held a solo exhibition at Zhejiang Saili Art Museum, Hangzhou; they also showed works at A Space Gallery, Brooklyn, the Bridge Arts Foundation, Los Angeles, Soul Arts Center, Beijing, and Soil Gallery, Seattle in 2024. Chen won the “Best in Show” prize at Main Street Arts (NY) and had a solo show at the Distillery Gallery Boston. Chen has also shown works at Erie Art Museum (PA), Abigail Ogilvy Gallery (MA), Morgan Lehman Gallery (NY), Yiwei Gallery(CA), School of Visual Arts (NY), Fowler-Kellogg Art Center (NY), Piano Craft Gallery (MA), and so on. Chen was an artist-in-resident with full awards at Soaring Gardens (PA), and Chautauqua Institution (NY) in 2022. Chen holds MFA in Painting from Boston University with the Merit Scholarship & Social Impact award and BFA dual degree in Painting & Studio for Interrelated Media from Massachusetts College of Art & Design with the Presidential Scholarship & George Nick Prize.