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ABOUT

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GRAPHIC DESIGN

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PAINTING

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PRINT MEDIA & PHOTOGRAPHY

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SCULPTURE

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VISUAL NARRATIVE

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@bu_visualarts

@bu_graphicdesign

@bostonpainting

@pmp.bu
@bostonsculpture
@buvisualnarrative

www.teachaibeer.com

@tea.chai.beer

she/her

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Téa Chai Beer

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My practice explores the multiplicity of the self through layered drawings and paintings on translucent substrates, including raw silk, poly silk, and rice paper. As a (cisgender) queer and mixed-race Korean and White American, I move through the world fluidly, shifting and adjusting according to context or perception by others. Through self-portraiture, my work aims to embody this slipperiness by exploring the complexities of my experiences across various situations and affects.

My paintings begin with stacked drawings—suggesting movement, different moments in time, or multiple feelings held simultaneously—to provide a compositional foundation. I then work wet-into-wet with water-based media, such as acrylic paints or inks, resulting in stains that complicate the initial framework, echo the translucency of the substrate, and evoke notions of indelibility, fluidity, and plasticity. As the layers of stained pigment continue to build upon themselves, obfuscating earlier passages, I draw out select moments of clarity with denser opacities. Due to my use of unprimed poly silk and silk, the pigment ultimately seeps into the surface’s fibers, resulting in two-sided paintings and drawings that, when suspended in the middle of the room, simultaneously beg a more embodied encounter with their viewers. Installed this way, their ephemeral materiality can elicit ideas of dislocation, dissociation, and disassociation.

Through the porosity of my substrate, every gesture—intentional and accidental—becomes permanently embedded in the painting’s body; I think about how this parallels the ways our actions and lived experiences become a part of who we are and how we relate to others. Through the metaphors I draw between how I make my work and how I feel in my own skin, I hope to exploit, cannibalize, and resist ideas of affect, identity, and morality at stake in my materials, process, and practice.

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