7 Questions with YunRay Chung

BACK COVER ARTIST - ORIGINAL issue

YunRay Chung is a Taiwanese artist based in New York City. featured in Al-Tiba9 ORIGINAL issue, interviewed by Mohamed Benhadj.

Coming from a medical background in university, YunRay decided to move to the United States to study fashion design after he finished his Bachelor’s Degree in Physical Therapy in Taiwan. After two years of training in Los Angeles, YunRay got into the Fashion Institute of Technology pursuing the Master of Fine Art in Fashion Design, where he explored his multidisciplinary art journey. Often YunRay uses second-hand garments deconstruction, performances, installation, and films to tell the narratives of his vision. He uses his work to speak to social issues, but also human emotions and experiences.

www.sincerelyyunray.com | @sincerely.yunray

YunRay Chung is a combination of a fashion researcher, concept developer, and performance artist. With a wide range of mediums like performances, objects, films, and interactive installations, YunRay observes, researches, and tries to understand human emotions and experiences. Through research, he builds objects, installations, and performance pieces as his commentary, using second-hand garments as a vessel. The final products can be deconstructed second-hand garments, his performances, the visual images, or just the thoughts.

Everything YunRay does conclude as his concept development; Observed by his eyes, thought by his brain, and felt by his heart, and he invites you to feel them too.

YunRay Chung, before talking about your art, could you tell us about yourself?

I am a performance artist and a fashion designer who lives in New York City. I came from Taiwan, and I came to America to study art and fashion. I like to use performance combining with garments and movements to represent social issues and bring emotions into the political discussion.

Can you give an example of an artwork that you have made that you feel especially successful? And talk about how and why you ended up with the result that pleases you?

My most dedicated and most successful piece is the project "NEW AMERICANA," which is a four-part performance piece. I had been researching immigrant issues for about two years, and it took me a while to figure out how to express the emotions and explain the situation with immigrants. It was a lot of looking into past works done by performance artists, and what I can do with my fashion designer identity also. I ended up using second-hand garments in my performances and practiced movements and activities with and on them to symbolize the different stages immigrants go through.

As a Taiwanese artist based in New York, what social issues does your work speak about? How does body expression help you reveal this intention?

For the piece "NEW AMERICANA", I was focusing on the issue about immigrants, I wanted to bring the conversation from just policies to more human and emotional aspects. I used different movements, like standing up, embracing, and cutting down garments to express the different stages for immigrants to go through while moving to a new country.

Al-Tiba9 Contemporary Fashion Weekend is the most well-known Avant-guard fashion event in the Arab world and in Spain that merges fashion and performance art. Please tell us about the meeting point of these two types of art in your project "New Americana," and why this Spanish title?

I have always wanted to be a fashion designer, and art is still relevant in my process, but it was a long and challenging process to try to merge my performance art and my fashion design. What I found in the meeting point is the second-hand garments, and how to incorporate them into the performance, and using them for design process afterward.

I first got the word "Americanah" from the book with the same name by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. In the book, the feelings of not fitting in as an immigrant struck me profoundly, and it allows me to confirm how I feel after moving to America, this type of in-between feeling. After that, I found that Americana is also a Spanish word, reflecting on the debates around Mexican immigrants, I found this word particularly compelling, and I used it as my project title.

How do you process from performance projet to a fashion runway, what makes your lives so unique expression?

It was using the photography, and how the second-hand garments become after the performance, using them as my draping tool. In a way, I'm designing and making clothes through performances, using old clothes, but creating new stories for them.

What do you find most challenging about using textiles, and what is the difference between using this medium for performing live and on the runway?

The challenge I face about using textiles is I am using pre-existing garments, rather than creating my textiles. Later on, I discovered that there is still a lot I can do with textiles, I added in textures by fusing and adding on paint mediums to the garments, I hand-dyed the garments and I also hand weaved and knitted new textiles to implement in the garments. I think the difference is I think performing live gives me a lot more freedom to do what I want to do, and it also allows the audience to see beyond the clothes, but more of the human connections and the stories behind them. It is still essential to have runways, though, to emphasize the garments and showcase the clothes as they are. For me, it's just a different approach and different aspects of viewing.

Do you have any upcoming shows or collaborations?

I do, I am currently doing research on age and aging, and looking into the idea of aging as bad. I have been talking to different agencies to try to have a more significant performance than I did the last time, and I'm excited to step into my next project!