Jiawen Chen wins the WIA SAA Agents Award for New Talent in Illustration
We are delighted to announce know that this year’s winner of the WIA SAA Agents Award for New Talent in Illustration is Jiawen Chen for her work titled ME INSIDE. She was born in Guangzhou, China and is now based in New York City. She got her BFA Illustration degree in Guangzhou Academy of Fine Art in 2018, and MFA in Illustration from the School of Visual Art in 2020. She creates her work using different techniques, including digital painting, silkscreen printing and watercolour.
A big thank you to Alice Ball, Jonathan Hedley and Stephanie Alexander-Jinks for judging this year - they picked a worthy winner. Alice wrote about Jiawen’s work:
"We saw Jiawen’s work as a clear winner. The impressive variety of concepts in this entry are all brilliantly designed and executed and the different compositions are equally and consistently very well done even as stand alone pieces. The artworks portrays a sensitivity to the subject matter really well. We all agreed the style and work in general has a broad commercial appeal across all different types of media in the industry along with having a ‘global’ appeal”.
Jiawen's prize will be six month’s trial representation including mentoring and career development by one of the SAA’s member agents.