【Limited Edition Handmade Art Book】City Doll Series 2018-2023

This work documents artist Tseng Yen-Yu's "City Doll Series," created between 2018 and 2023 during her participation in art residencies and biennials. Twenty representative dolls have been selected from a collection of 140, published in a bilingual (Chinese/English) limited edition of 30 copies. The dolls draw inspiration from the distinct personalities of people from various cultures. Tseng employs her signature hand-wrapping technique to sculpt the figures, imbuing them with dramatic tension. For the materials, she specifically chooses discarded clothing and textiles from the local areas, aiming to unearth regional stories embedded within the used fabrics. Through her interactions, Tseng captures what she sees, encounters, and hears, wrapping these experiences into each doll. These creations encapsulate collective local memories and her personal travel recollections, while also documenting the local aesthetic through the repurposed materials. With advancements in contemporary printing technology, fabric printing now accommodates a wider range of textures and offers enhanced clarity. The dolls, born from discarded fabric, return to their material essence. In addition to fabric printing, Tseng incorporates hand-stitching and hand-braided ropes to create a horizontal scroll-style artist's book. As the book is unfurled, each doll appears alongside a map of its corresponding region, reminiscent of using GPS to navigate during a journey. Encounters and connections made during these travels may link to future people, events, or journeys, without a fixed order, guided by the viewer's subjective perception—mirroring the artist's global textile art odyssey. Upon fully opening the book, all dolls are revealed simultaneously, bound by red stitching, with their narratives presented in a folded paper insert. 【About TSENG Yen-Yu】 Since 2014, artist Tseng Yen-Yu's work has been invited to international textile art biennials across the globe, including in 16 countries such as the United States, France, Russia, Italy, and Lithuania. She has also undertaken professional artist residencies in regions including Taiwan, Canada, and Latvia. She has developed a unique creative methodology, integrating artistic expressions from textiles, sculpture, and puppetry. In her creative process, she utilizes fine stitching to shape discarded clothing of various materials, forming three-dimensional representations of human figures and circular motifs. Within the atmospheric emotional context of the objects, she alludes to the interconnectedness between human society and the natural environment. The use of old garments, waste fabrics, and local fibers serves as geographical markers and historical extensions, reflecting cultural styles and environmental cycles. Her work becomes a means of experience, exchange, and contemplation, fostering a connection with the environment while weaving together concepts of memory, history, and storytelling. TSENG Yen-Yu is a Taiwanese artist with an MFA degree. She utilizes old garments and waste textiles through observation and experimentation, employing them for wrapping works as her unique textile technique of deconstruction and re-assemblage. This is a distinctive method she has created to sculpt fabrics in her signature style, particularly in response to the trends of industrialization and globalization. She expresses objects and stories to reflect who she is and what surrounds her, embodying the interrelationship between human society and the natural environment.