Cindy Yuen-Zhe Chen
Featuring Phuong Ngo, Marikit Santiago & Jayanto Tan
’Dismantle / Assemble’
9 April – 22 May, 2026
Thursday 16 April: Exhibition Launch
Friday 17 April: Art in Action: A Professional Development Workshop for Emerging Artists
Wednesday 22 & 29 April, 13 May: Echoes
Saturday 16 May: Auslan Tour
Accessibility
Audio descriptions for Dismantle / Assemble have been co-designed by Sarah Empey and Anthia Balis, and aim to provide enhanced accessibility for all visitors, including those who are blind or have low vision. These can be accessed in the gallery via a series of QR codes located next to a number of the artworks in the exhibition. Verge encourages patrons to bring their own headphones. Tactile floor markings are also provided in the gallery for visitors using white canes.
Auslan Video guides have also been developed by Angie Goto and Sue Jo Wright.
Cindy Yuen-Zhe Chen, Phuong Ngo, Marikit Santiago, Jayanto Tan, Dismantle / Assemble, 4 channel video and sound, 14mins & 21mins. Photo credit. Cindy Yuen-Zhe Chen.
Artist Statement
Dismantle / Assemble by Cindy Yuen-Zhe Chen holds stories of tactility told through encounters with the artist’s maternal grandfather’s coins and grandmother’s cultural garments. By engaging with historical and personal narratives of European colonisation in Southeast Asia, the works examine how we craft meaning from versions of history to shape our understanding of the present.
A four-channel video work made in collaboration with artists Phuong Ngo, Marikit Santiago and Jayanto Tan reflects upon the artists’ trajectories of intergenerational migration and cultural transmission, foregrounding the complex cultural identities of Southeast Asian migrant peoples in Australia. Tactile sound sculptures explore their sense of emplacement, inviting people to encounter sonic waterways in Sydney and Melbourne by touching carved surfaces that merge topographies of their cultural homelands in Southeast Asia with colonial coins.
This exhibition includes tactile sound sculptures, audio descriptions for blind and low vision audiences, and Auslan videos for d/Deaf and Hard of Hearing audiences.
Artist Bio
Cindy Yuen-Zhe Chen practices in Sydney on unceded Darramuragal and Gadigal lands. Her drawing, sound and video works examine Southeast Asian Chinese diasporic identity as a generative and emplaced process. Chen has held solo exhibitions nationally and internationally with 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art at the Australian National Maritime Museum in 2022, Willoughby City Council in 2021 and the Ningbo Museum of Art in China in 2018. Chen was selected as a finalist for the 2025 Fisher’s Ghost Award Open and Contemporary categories and the 2021/22 NSW Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship. She curated Lunar New Year public programs for the Art Gallery of NSW in 2023. As a recipient of the University Postgraduate Award, she completed a PhD at the UNSW Art and Design in 2020.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body, and supported by the NSW Government through the Create NSW - Creative Steps New Work grant.
