Exhibition Announcement: Sijia Chen’s “No Single Origin” at Shatto Gallery

Shatto Gallery is pleased to present No Single Origin, the first solo exhibition with the gallery by Los Angeles–based Chinese-American multimedia artist Sijia Chen. 

Through papercut collage paintings and sculptures, No Single Origin brings into focus Chen’s ongoing practice of constructing compositions from fragments of paper—immigration forms, photographs, restaurant menus, and other printed materials—drawn from both personal and public sources. Once tied to specific individuals and functions, these materials are cut, layered, and recomposed into shared surfaces where their original contexts no longer hold. What begins as document becomes structure, and meaning is produced through relation rather than origin. 

In this reconfiguration, materials that once served to identify, verify, and distinguish individual lives no longer sustain those functions. Elements detach from origin and reappear in relation to others, producing a system in which authorship is dispersed and identity cannot remain singular. Meaning is no longer secured by documentation, but emerges through adjacency, accumulation, and interruption. What takes shape is not a record, but a field in which distinctions between individual and collective begin to break down. 

A group of larger works unfolds through mountain-like formations that gather and disperse across the picture plane. Built from layered fragments, these compositions hold a sense of terrain without fully settling into a fixed landscape. Distance and proximity coexist, and no single vantage point resolves the image. 

In contrast, a series of more concentrated works draws these elements into denser formations. Forms accumulate and overlap, as edges soften and distinctions begin to blur. Elements remain visible, yet no longer fully discrete, held within a field that compresses rather than extends. 

Interspersed throughout are works that introduce recognizable forms—objects, animals, and everyday motifs—whose outlines remain legible even as their surfaces resist singular origin. Familiarity persists, but does not fully stabilize what is seen. No single point of origin can be fully located. Images and forms remain in relation without consolidating into a stable whole. What holds is not coherence, but a condition in which meaning remains unstable—shared, provisional, and never entirely complete.

Together, these works reposition the viewer within a field where distinctions remain unsettled and meaning continues to evolve. Sijia Chen is a multimedia artist celebrated for her papercut collages and large-scale sculptures. She received her B.A. from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and her M.F.A. from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University. Her works are held in prestigious public collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Inside-Out Art Museum, and the Guangdong Art Museum. Notable public installations include those at Seattle International Airport, Chaoshan International Airport, and the Shantou International Convention Center, alongside numerous civic commissions throughout the United States and China.