Chinese Name: 曾美禎
Born: 1977
Place of Birth: Hualien (Eastern Taiwan)
Did You Know?
Taiwanese sculptor Tseng Mei-chen has been living in Italy for 20 years, dedicating herself to creating and promoting wood engraving. She is the only Taiwanese member of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers in the UK. Her work, the “Landscape of Words” series (紋字風景系列), has been recognized with the awards at the annual exhibition of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers.
Tseng Mei-chen has had a passion for literature and art since she was young. In 1996, she studied English Literature at Fu Jen Catholic University (輔仁大學), with a focus on British literature. With a strong desire to experience the birthplace of the Renaissance, she went to Italy after graduating from college. In 2001, she was admitted to the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze and transferred to the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome the following year, where she majored in oil painting and minored in printmaking. Her aesthetic thinking was deeply influenced by the art of Florence.
After 2004, Tseng gradually turned to wood engraving as her main form of artistic expression, studying under a renowned European wood engraver Francesco Parisi. After her first attempt at wood engraving, she realized that this would be her lifelong pursuit. When she graduated in 2006, she abandoned oil painting and devoted herself fully to developing as a wood engraver. She established her studio in Rome, aspiring to become an outstanding international wood engraver.
Wood engraving uses cross-sectional woodblocks (traditional printmaking uses longitudinal ones) that are harder in texture. It requires the use of a diamond-shaped engraving knife on a copper plate to create the image, resulting in a black background with white text. Because of the hard material, steady and delicate curves can be carved, allowing for the expression of light and shadow through fine lines.
Wood engraving is relatively rare in Taiwan but is an important medium for printmaking in the West. Tseng Mei-chen believes that narrative content, line structure, and knife technique are the three essential elements in creating wood engravings. Its delicate lines and ability to depict layered images allow artists to create rich and vivid visuals using the vitality and flexibility of wood. It is particularly suitable for works with strong storytelling and for series of works.
Tseng particularly appreciates the lines in wood engravings: clean, sharp, and direct, yet capable of creating rich layers and diverse images. Without the distractions of colors, all shades of darkness are the result of variations in lines, making the artist’s skill evident and easily understood by viewers.
Tseng Mei-chen describes the artist’s creation on a woodblock as a conversation with the wood itself. The relationship between the two is balanced between the movement of the knife and the natural resistance of the wood, almost like a collaborative effort to complete a piece of artwork. From this perspective, even if the woodblock is not perfectly joined or has imperfections in the grain, it is as if the wood, influenced by time and temperature, is participating in the composition.
Tseng prefers to convey an accumulation of emotions through series of works. Her images often have strong storytelling and narrative qualities. With a background in English literature, she often draws inspiration from tragic literature and focuses on existentialist writers such as Sartre, Nietzsche, and Kafka, creating a series of portrait prints. She also has a series named “Medea,” inspired by the rich psychological descriptions of the eponymous protagonist in ancient Greek literature.
Most of Tseng Mei-chen’s print works are interpretations of the human form: the body, face, hands, gaze, portraits, and distorted expressions, all carved with lines. In addition to these, her works also depict landscapes, interpretations of the environment, still life, and objects. In her artwork, besides European portraits, there are also many elements from Taiwan, such as the songs and dances of the Tao indigenous people of Orchid Island (蘭嶼) and the performance group U-Theatre (優人神鼓).
Tseng has extensive experience in international exhibitions and is highly regarded in the field of printmaking. Her printmaking creations have a unique style. From 2007 to 2011, she returned to Taiwan, during which time she held teaching positions at Fu Jen Catholic University’s Italian Department and National Taipei University of the Arts. Afterward, she returned to Italy and settled in Rome, dedicating herself to printmaking once more.