Chinese-American artist Windy Chien makes art installations that range in size: from tiny sculptures that fit into the palm of your hand to full-blown room-sized installations. Her technique? Anything and everything is created with knotted strings, ropes, and other textiles.
“I make sculpture and installations that elevate the vernacular and inspire awe and understanding,” she writes on her website. “In the context of knots, I bring aesthetics to the intersection of function, science, and history to illuminate what’s most fascinating about knots: the journey of the line.”
Chien is best known for her 2016 work, The Year of Knots, in which she learned a new knot every day for a year. “The Year of Knots isn’t about inventing, but rather about learning how knots work—and about revealing their beauty to others,” reads her website. “She wanted to bring out the aesthetic side of this functional practice through focusing on a single knot a day and helping others to really see it, separated from the context in which it might be used.”
Her works are very pleasing to the eye, proving once and for all that art is judged by its performance and not by the materials themselves. Take a look!
