Today we’d like to introduce you to Irene Chung.
Growing up in Taipei, Taiwan, I always loved to draw, and my friends always saw me as the “art girl.” However, in the past, I regarded art as more of a pastime than a potential career path. I studied Health Sciences and Journalism at Boston University and thought I wanted to be a journalist. However, after two years of working in the newsroom, I still couldn’t resist the impulse to pursue art professionally. So, after graduating from Boston University in 2022, I decided to take a pivotal turn and pursued an MFA in Illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design.
In the past 1.5 years at RISD, I have had the opportunity to work with several brands and editorial projects between Taiwan and the United States. It was scary to restart my career and make a sudden change while most of my college friends have been working for two years now. However, I am really glad that I chose to pursue art and design. Since I came to RISD, I feel academically challenged and fulfilled every day because so many talented artists here constantly inspire me. Graduating this June, I am planning to move to New York City and work with more publishers and brands I admire and create more work that brings joy to people’s lives.
We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
During my first year in the MFA program, I felt lost honestly. First, it was because I was having a hard time adjusting to Providence from Boston. I grew up in a city, so the quietness in Providence could be deafening sometimes for me. As the youngest and the only person without professional art experience in our cohort, I felt disconnected and insecure. I was trying to find my voice in the group and figuring out my style and ways of storytelling, figuring out what subjects matter to me. Amongst all the changes, I was also very homesick. As an artist/illustrator, I think a good quality of life and mental state are very important, otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to have the mental capacity to create.
I think the time when my career took off was the summer of 2023. I spent a month in Seattle living in my sister’s apartment, exploring the city, cooking, and trying out new restaurants by myself. It was the first time when I was in a new city alone, and I found that I had so much free time to reflect and decompress. I was hoping that I could share some travel moments with someone, so I started to draw. It started spontaneously on my sketchbook, and then I brought those drawings onto my iPad and started a whole “Seattle Diary” series on Instagram. I paid very close attention to what style I felt intuitive with and the visual aesthetics I was inclined to. I also found that drawing helps me calm down and ease my anxiety. Surprisingly and luckily, this Seattle Diary caught the attention of an editor at It’s Nice That, a prominent creative platform based in London. She published my series on their site, which helped to get some attention and work. Since last summer, my career started to take off and I have had a lot of fun working with different magazines and brands.
Now, a year and a half later, I have built my routines and meaningful connections here. I think I will be missing Providence after graduation.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
At an art school, people are surprised when they know I came from a science and journalism background, and question why I am doing something different now. However, for me, illustration is a way to communicate and tell stories, especially for the subjects that I deeply care about. And recently, the subjects that I am drawn to have been women, food, celebration, and pleasure. Sometimes life can be challenging for many of us, but by drawing these happy moments with so many smiles on people’s faces, I feel like my stress and worry could disappear during my creative process, and usually, people also show their happiness when they see my work. This is also the moment when I see the power of illustration —- to tell stories, connect people, and bring joy to their lives.
Since last July, I have been trying to integrate my healthcare and journalistic background into my artwork and working on my MFA thesis project around the theme of womanhood and femininity, inspired by both my personal experiences and scientific research. I use the notion of “guilty pleasure” to explore why it affects more women’s psyches than men’s, how this concept shapes women’s perspectives on their bodies and health, and how it is used in advertisements in Western consumer culture. I am interested in how the narrative changes when putting these two opposite words, “guilt” and “pleasure,” next to each other, and I am more than curious to know what factors make women feel guilty about their indulgence and the reasons behind it.
As a young woman who went to a girls’ high school and has always been surrounded mostly by female friends, I discovered that women have several female-only shared health experiences and feelings that are hard to quantify statistically. The “guilt” around consumption and indulgence is one of the strong collective feelings I have noticed. Therefore, I started my project in Providence, Rhode Island, by interviewing several women entrepreneurs in the food, wine, and wellness industries. I want to find out what the guilty pleasures are for women working in food, whether it is at a decadent chocolatier or sweet donut shop if there are any. There have been some interesting findings along the way, as most of these businesswomen have learned not to feel guilty about their indulgence anymore — they have come to honor their feelings and do things that make them happy. Furthermore, I found that guilty pleasure is not just eating a piece of cake — it is a concept that ties into someone’s childhood memories, upbringing, and personal relationships with food and body. This is an ongoing project that will continue throughout this year, and I am excited and grateful for this opportunity for women to show their vulnerability but also feel empowered at the same time.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
I think authenticity, resilience, and the courage to take rejections are three of the most important characteristics of the art industry. I wouldn’t describe myself as successful because I am still navigating this art industry as an emerging artist. I spent lots of time cold emailing art directors and creative directors to spare a few minutes to give feedback on my work or inquire whether we had an opportunity to collaborate. During this process, I realized that art is just a very subjective matter and learned to not take criticism personally. As a freelancer and independent artist, I am representing myself, so there are a lot of new things I have to learn. However, I think exploring the unknown is a part of the appeal, and I am still learning to find the balance between taking constructive feedback for my work and staying true to myself. And most importantly, not let rejections affect the way I see my work.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://irenechung.
com/ - Instagram: https://www.
instagram.com/irenechung.art/ - Linkedin: https://www.
linkedin.com/in/irenechungart/
Image Credits
Irene Chung
