My latest series was made as a means of coping with loss. When my family learned that my father’s time left with us was potentially limited, he was optimistic about his prognosis and wanted life to carry on as normal as possible. I followed his lead; rather than letting an uncertain future paralyze me, I chose to focus on positivity, gratitude, and the highlights of my father’s amazing life. My latest pieces celebrate his life, legacy, and lasting memory. Each layered collage evokes feelings of hope, love, joy, and wonder that defined his wonderful life and our final years together. 

A man of humble beginnings, my father inspired me with his strength, resilience, and humility. Despite many challenges and hardships, he was always optimistic and hopeful for the future. My father was selfless, supportive, and devoted. He encouraged my sister and me to pursue our dreams, and he truly embodied what it meant to live life deliberately and courageously. 

I learned so much about my father and myself during his final years, and have come to realize just how much I am like him, that I am truly my father’s daughter. Now that he has passed, I fully grasp the depth and fierceness of my love for him and his love for us. I draw on forms, shapes, and colors from nature and memory and combine them with text and poetry to construct layered works on paper that give physical form to abstract concepts and feelings. My pieces elicit the happiness, love, generosity, optimism, and strength that he brought into my life and the lives of everyone he touched.   

I am drawn to paper as it is a very understated and resilient material. It can be fragile and delicate but also strong and sturdy. I work with hand-cut paper to create dimensional collages that explore the threshold between painting and sculpture. I paint, cut, and arrange various shapes and colors as if I am piecing together a puzzle; each shape, line, and color is a hint, trace, and impression of nature and memory. 

With this series of ten pieces, Alexandra Chiou takes us on a visual journey whose connection to the wind–the central theme of this issue–unfolds into fragments. Each of the artworks presented in this series opens the door to many visions, at the same time dream-like and tangible. Each of the artist's paintings-collages-sculptures–no matter what label we assign them since they evade singular categorization–is structured in perfect equilibrium. They each offer the viewer a delicate insight into the order of the universe. Chiou inevitably draws the viewer into an experience that is broader than a purely visual one.

The artist plays with the airiness of the medium in works like "Lotus Awakening," pairing bold colors with sections of opacity and transparency. Chiou leans into the materiality of her media, such as the density of the paper, to create visions. Sometimes, her works resemble the realm of dreams like the ambiguous, floating forms and text in “Impossible Dream.” Other works evoke familiar visions of the natural environment like the brightly-colored, floral scene in “Abundant Universe.” Across her oeuvre, Chiou’s delicate creative process weaves together media, particularly watercolor–a medium of both transparency and the disappearance of boundaries par excellence. It challenges us to investigate how to create pathways in the intersections of color and form, of text and imagery. When looking at "The Voyage," the artist similarly allows us to question the imagery of particles passing through the air, through winds that, whether dense or opaque, always break down boundaries. In “Rebirth,” the vivid colors she uses on paper resemble a trail of pollen on the ground in the Spring. Chiou celebrates the power of germination carried by the air, about all the life carried out within very tiny things. As a result of Chiou's patient and meticulous practice, her works resemble mountains of paper shaped by the wind over time. They are a breeze in the grass, in the plains, and in our minds. They are petals twirling in the spring, mosses and lichens, ripples, as well as fine drops of dew, all the small and insignificant elements that contribute to the enrichment of our world and the fertility of the life we lead.

Alexandra Chiou’s work speaks to us about the poetry that is sometimes provoked by this force of nature in the air that surrounds us. They express how wind, breath, and empty spaces can bind, create, or tighten connections between things. Throughout these visual poems, each of the pieces contributes to the creation of a wavering of color, form, and emotion. Careful details, whether they are words or shapes that are both vivid and mysterious, make these assemblages a genie out of the bottle; a house of cards both volatile and ephemeral, delicately entwined, and yet providing a sense of stability beyond the ordinary.

- The Editors

Alexandra Chiou is a visual artist who draws on nature and memory to create intricate collages that give physical form to abstract concepts and feelings such as hope, joy, beauty, resilience, and wonder. Alexandra has always looked to nature’s contours and horizons as symbols of hope during challenging times and life transitions, and she is constantly inspired by the quiet power and resilience of nature. Through her works, she strives to instill a sense of peace, calm, and wonder within individuals by transporting viewers into the magical worlds she creates. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including the US Embassy in Ethiopia. She currently lives and works in Cambridge, Massachusetts.