Artists' Books

Part 1 of Identity: A Sense of Self in an Ever - changing Society. by Charisma Christal

Welcome to Polkamotion with Ma and Pa Chen by Teresa Chen (Call No. 0153)

Welcome to Polkamotion with Ma and Pa Chen by Teresa Chen is a documentary-style book that combines family photos, newspaper clippings, and adverts regarding her parents’ experience with the art of polka dancing. After their retirement, Teresa Chen’s parents took up polka dancing, a predominantly Polish and German art form. As their passion for the dance blossomed, so did their love for documenting their experience photographically. They would give the camera to fellow dancers who captured them in motion, and it is through these accumulated photographs that Chen created this book. 

This book was a response to the concept of “Otherness,” a subject of focus within her practice. In her dissertation, Chen writes “that visual art can be effective for understanding the intersectional, hybrid, and relational processes involved in the construction of identities.”(pg 124). Being an (East) Asian diaspora in America, an identity was socially constructed for her by a society that did not understand her personal experience. Her book works to dismantle this hegemony of understanding and instead use her art to reveal the intricacies that lie within the idea of identity. Her parents, who are immigrants from China taking up a European dance form is an act of resistance against this hegemony in itself. This is not to say that moving to a multiracial country means that cultures are up for grabs or that you relinquish your own but instead shows that there is room for an exchange of experiences and ideas. 

This book shows Ma and Pa Chen finding their love for dance in a culture different than theirs. It reinforces the idea that there is an opportunity for each individual to form their identity based on the relations between their own unique set of experiences and not in relation to who is different or “other” than them.

Artist’s Website :

http://www.teresachen.ch

Works Cited

Chen, Teresa, and Martin Jäggi. Welcome to Polkamotion with Ma and Pa Chen. Edition Patrick Frey, 2002.

Chen, Teresa. Between Selves and Others: Exploring Strategic Approaches within Visual Art. 2014. Plymouth University, PhD        dissertation.

Teresa Chen by Martin Jaeggi (Contribution by)