Artists’ Top Five: Hue Chen
Meadows in Calico Basin.
Artists’ Top Five is a Couch in the Desert series where artists share their top 5 places to visit in Las Vegas.
Hue Chen’s Top Five
One of my favorite ways to spend time with my friends is going on a weekday night with my friends to this arcade and getting the 1 hour unlimited play. They’ve got every game you can imagine, from the regular arcade games like skee-ball to Japanese rhythm games where the gameplay is entirely in Japanese. I grew up frequenting arcades with my cousins when I still lived in China. The loud sounds from the games and watching people play or race on the driving games give me a lot of nostalgia for my childhood.
2) Taiwan Deli
In particular the Spring Mountain location. My family and I visit this location often for breakfast and to pick up a bag of their frozen handmade buns and dumplings. The waiters here are incredibly vibrant, often we have conversations with them and talk about the things we miss about our lives before immigrating to America. When you’re here please try the warm soy bean soup and fried dough, a very common breakfast food in China and Taiwan. The interior design of this place inspires me a lot, with chandeliers over red picnic table mats and the news blaring in Mandarin from the back. There is a separate room for overflow seating where the wall divider is a large fish tank with mini koi fish. Just super magical!
The best place to go to sit and write in the fall and winter months. During the day I’ll find a spot under a tree usually by where the stream is, and listen to the wind, birdsong, and rustling of leaves. Being with nature is vital to my arts practice, and I’m lucky to live close to this area of town.
I find myself here multiple times a month. Rather that is getting a treat at SomiSomi or going upstairs to the Mangahole, a bookstore for Japanese manga. It’s also one of my favorite places to see people’s streetstyle.
My friend Victoria is creating something beautiful on the East side of Vegas. To me, the Solidarity Fridge represents a new wave of mutual aid efforts that I haven’t seen before in Las Vegas. Every time I’ve visited I’ve felt so held in community, fed by food made by my loving womxn, and educated on food justice and why it’s important to care about how we care for the land and to learn how to grow our own food even in the desert.
Henry the Dachshund sitting with Hue in Calico Basin.
Hue is a cultural worker and multidisciplinary artist based in Las Vegas, NV making places, spaces, and objects for love to flourish. Through this combination of participatory and observatory mediums, they engage with co-creating love through community by facilitating modular spaces, performances, and sculptures through the lens of finding home for the soul. Concepts explored range from emergent behaviors amongst animals and humans within urban spaces, as well as contemplations on the relationship between nature, soul, and space. They were selected for the Desert Companion’s “2022 Ones to Watch” and have received grants from the NV Arts Council.
See more of Hue’s work on their website and on Instagram.
All images courtesy of the artist.
Posted and published by Ellie Rush on November 27, 2023