Bees 019-01

Body/Wound 009, Body/Wound 007, Girlfriend (self-portrait) 035
all from the series The Bearable

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Bees 010-02

Body/Wound 024, Bees 005-01, Body/Wound Happy “Birthday”

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Bees 057-05

all images © ZHE CHEN

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Chinese photographer ZHE CHEN has been documenting in the past four years her self-inflicted activities of her own and others. The result is two moving and uncomfortable photo essays:

Bees records a marginalized group of people in China, who, faced with chaos, violence, alienation and irredeemable loss in life, feel propelled to leave physical traces and markings on their bodies. And The Bearable (2010), a photo series documenting her own self-inflictions over the past 4 years.

I hope my photographs inquire upon society’s prejudice and preconception towards this community, and not become illustrations or pictorial evidence for the topic at hand: every subject is an individual, not just ‘one of them’ – his or her life cannot be predicted or dictated by any constructed social code or notion. Depression plants the seed of introspection. The bees take it in; They reason it, embrace it and explore it, forming an isolated universe in their own minds. These self-sustained universes contain every reason that explains the ‘abnormality’ that no one who lacks in common experiences could decode. I hope a first glance of my work conveys the idea of secrecy and sentiments, under which lies information awaiting exposure and recognition: like an index page pointing towards all the unanswered questions.

In a sense, just as DELEUZE once stated, “Making art becomes a process of healing.”

ZHE CHEN is currently living in Los Angeles. She holds a BFA in Photography & Imaging from the Art Center College of Design, CA. This year, she won the Three Shadows Photography Award (2011) and was finalist for the Burn/Magnum Emerging Photographer Grant (2011).