Movana Chen: Questioning the Line

The latest live performance in artist Movana Chen’s ongoing Body Containers series. In Questioning the Line, Movana Chen and a group of dancers subvert human divisions through performance. Within Chen’s Body Containers – interconnected wearable sculptures – the dancers form living statues periodically emerging into stillness and coordinated movement to explore relationships with one another and with the audience. Presented for the first time in London, the work cultivates shared experience that transcends geopolitical borders. The piece draws on maps, not as background, but as material: shredded cartographic imagery is reshaped into Chen’s Body Containers, embedding questions of territory directly into the body itself. At its core, the work treats the body as a vessel for stories, histories, and languages, tracing the visible and invisible boundaries that shape how we understand bodies, land, and identity. In a world increasingly shaped by division, displacement, and ecological uncertainty, Questioning the Line invites us to reconsider the lines we draw and to imagine a more interconnected way of being. It is an act of remembering our shared belonging to the earth and our responsibility to care for it. Based between Hong Kong and Lisbon. Movana Chen’s multidisciplinary practice is rooted in the exploration of communication across cultures, deconstructing and reconstructing books, dictionaries, maps and recently with travel documents as her material to create sculptural installations that weave connection between people offer messages of hope and togetherness, love and trust. Her work is a fusion of media, performance, installation and sculpture. Her work has been shown widely, recently including at the Turkish Textile Biennial (2025), Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art (2025), M+ Museum, Hong Kong (2024), the 3rd Thailand Biennale, Chiang Rai (2023–24), CHAT 5th anniversary exhibition, Hong Kong (2024) and the Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong (2024). Chen’s works are included in the collections of M+ Museum, CHAT (Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile), Hong Kong, QAGMA (Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art), Australia, The Burger Collection, Hong Kong and Switzerland, Galila Barzilai Collection, Belgium and the Hong Kong Heritage Museum. Chen studied Fashion Design at the London College of Fashion, UK, and Fine Art at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) in Hong Kong. With support from Burger Collection and the TOY Family.