Millie Chen

Art is created by artists with certain purposes, which either indicate concepts that can not be simply expressed, or resonate with viewers to ponder ideas deeply over. Millie Chen, as the Canadian visual artist, creates art with the purpose of asking questions. Her recent digital projection and audio component, Tour, brings forward a question which warrants careful consideration.
The exhibition was installed in Vtape, a small room with sound and a wall for projection. Sitting in front of the wall screen, audiences were brought to sites with different natural landscapes, grounds full of grass, unknown flowers, stones and trees, where horrible genocide happened in history. With little difference to distinguish these places, the only information provided was the location’s name and the date of those dreadful events, which appeared at the bottom when the continuous scenes change from one to another. The four places shown were Murambi, Rwanda (April 16-22, 1994); Choeung Ek, Cambodia (April 17, 1975--January 7, 1979); Treblinka, Poland (July 23, 1942--October 19, 1943); and Wounded Knee, USA (December 29, 1890), which were organized chronologically from the most recent to the remote past. While the

The slow movement going along the ground provides the view to the audiences as they witness the scene and walk steadily. When Chen was filming the video, she avoided the appearance of any monument, and gave the impression that these places where racial killing happened seem to have no difference with the normal scenery in daily life. After decades and centuries of years, all the evidence of the crime disappeared, and left only the landscapes “somewhere between ‘wilderness’ and ‘cultivation’”. Up to this point, viewers can not stop thinking about the question Chen brought from the video that “how we can sustain the memory of that which has become