Description
In 1936, Chen Chin painted 化粧 (Applying Makeup) — two women composing their appearance in front of a mirror in their room. It is a deeply personal moment: women in their own spaces, on their own terms. No audience. No institution. Just the quiet act of self-composition.
About Chen Chin (陳進)
Chen Chin (1907–1998) was born during the Japanese rule of Taiwan. She is recognized as Taiwan's first prominent woman painter, known for her paintings of women and intimate life.
In 1927, the Taiwanese government sponsored the inaugural Taiten (台灣美術展覽會), the Taiwan Art Exhibition. Controversially, out of 92 total participants, three unknown 19-year-old artists were the only Taiwanese artists included: Chen Chin, Kuo Hsueh-hu (郭雪湖), and Lin Yushan (林玉山). The trio became known as the "Three Youths of Taiten" (台展三少年).
Chen Chin trained in Japanese nihonga technique but consistently painted Taiwanese subjects — women in their worlds, in moments that belonged to them. Her work navigated between Taiwan under Japanese rule and Paiwan Aboriginal women lifestyles, creating Taiwanese femininity through her painting. She deserves far more recognition than she has received.
Ninety years later, I reinterpret that painting through glitch.
I began by expanding the room — using AI to give the women more space to breathe. Then I decomposed the image through Processing: the glitch strips the nihonga surface away entirely and replaces it with halftone, dither, and pixel corruption. But the glitch doesn't treat everything equally. Hard lacquered surfaces go black. Fabric holds its color stubbornly. Skin dissolves into halftone but fights to stay legible. The corruption reveals the materiality encoded in the image — what resists, what surrenders, what transforms.
Then I recompose. The pixel sorting algorithm rearranges the women into horizontal sediment bands, stretched and reorganized by machine logic. In the GIF, this recomposition becomes visible as a process — not a single frozen state but an ongoing negotiation between the image and the system acting on it. The women get stretched. They get rearranged. But they don't disappear. They are still there, still recognizable, still composing themselves in the mirror. The system processes them. They persist.
A woman artist in the 1936 Japanese colonial period in Taiwan had to sort herself through multiple systems just to be seen: Japanese imperial aesthetics, nihonga technique, colonial exhibition standards. Chen Chin passed through all of those sorting mechanisms and persisted and shone through all of it with her talents of portraying Taiwanese women.
I am a Taiwanese woman artist glitching, running the code, directing the AI. I am the one deciding what gets sorted and how. The act of glitching is the power shift.
Women are not being sorted. This time, women hold the power to sort and to decide.
Chen Chin persisted through the system with her painting. I invert it through glitch. Someone will come after us and reshape it again.
化妝 (Applying Makeup) was created in 1936. Under Taiwanese copyright law, it will enter the public domain in 2048, fifty years after Chen Chin's death. This work is an artistic dialogue with Chen Chin's painting, created with full credit and respect for her legacy.
Process Notes
- Room expansion: AI-generated extension of the original composition with Nano Banana(Gemini 3) in Photoshop
- Glitch processing: Processing
- Layer compositing: Photoshop
- GIF generation / pixel sorting: Processing
- Collaboration with code and AI
- Gif, 1800x1200, 61 frames, 25fps, 2026
1936 to 2026
1936年，陳進畫了《化粧》—兩位女子在房間裡對著鏡子整理自己的容貌。這是一個極為私密的時刻：女性在自己的空間裡，按自己的方式存在。沒有觀眾。沒有體制。只有安靜的自我梳理。
關於陳進
陳進（1907–1998）出生於日治時期的台灣。她被公認為台灣第一位傑出的女性畫家，以女性視角描繪當時台灣女性著稱。
1927年，台灣總督府主辦了首屆台灣美術展覽會（台展）。爭議的是，在92位參展者中，僅有三位入選的19歲藝術家是台灣人：陳進、郭雪湖與林玉山。三人後來被稱為「台展三少年」。
陳進師承日本膠彩畫技法，但始終描繪台灣的題材——她畫筆下的女性，活在自己的世界裡，那些時刻屬於她們自己。她的作品遊走於日治時期的台灣與排灣族女性的生活樣貌之間，以她的繪畫創造出台灣女性的形象。她值得遠比現在更多的認識與重視。
九十年後，我以 glitch 重新詮釋這幅畫。
我先擴展了房間—用 AI 給畫中的女性更多呼吸的空間。然後我透過 Processing 將影像解構：glitch 徹底剝除了膠彩的表面，以半色調、抖色和像素毀損取而代之。但 glitch 並非一視同仁。堅硬的屏風漆面變成全黑。布料頑固地守住色彩。皮膚溶解為半色調，卻掙扎著保持可辨識。損壞揭露了影像中編碼的物質性—什麼在抵抗，什麼在臣服，什麼在變形。
接著我重新組合。像素排序演算法將女子重新排列成水平的沉積層帶，被機器邏輯拉伸、重組。在 GIF 中，這個重組過程變得可見—不是凝固的單一狀態，而是影像與系統之間持續的相互拉扯。
女子們被拉伸。被重新排列。但她們沒有消失。她們仍在那裡，仍可辨識，仍在鏡前整理自己。系統處理了她們。她們依然存在。
一位 1936 年日本殖民時期台灣的女性藝術家，必須將自己通過層層系統的篩選才能被看見：日本帝國美學、膠彩畫技法、殖民展覽標準。陳進通過了所有這些篩選機制，以她描繪台灣女性的藝術才華，在台灣歷史上留下珍貴的文化資產。。
身為一位台灣女性藝術家—用 glitch創作，探索程式，引導 AI。我是那個決定什麼被排序、如何排序的人。過程本身，就是對歷史權力結構的翻轉
女性不再被篩選。而是擁有篩選、決定的主導權。
陳進以她的繪畫，穿越了體制。我透過 glitch 翻轉這個結構。在我們之後，會有人再次重塑。
《化妝》創作於 1936 年。依據台灣著作權法，此作品將於 2048 年—陳進逝世五十年後—進入公共領域。本作品是與陳進畫作的藝術對話，以完整的致敬與尊重向她的藝術資產致意。
創作筆記
- 空間擴展：於 Photoshop 中以 Nano Banana（Gemini 3）AI 生成延伸原始構圖
- Glitch 處理：Processing
- 圖層合成：Photoshop
- GIF 生成／像素排序：Processing
- 與程式碼及 AI 協作
- GIF，1800x1200，61 幀，25fps，2026