YU CHEN 余陈
Red Babies
Yu Chen paints the children a country hoped for, and lets them yawn, cry and stare straight back.
Absolutely love the portraits of these Red Babies from contemporary artist Yu Chen. She paints these babies with affection, but also with a critical distance on the roles they are given in today's Chinese society.
As one of the few female artists in a largely male-dominated art scene in China, she deals with social issues that are culturally and politically charged.
Thirteen years later, they're still staring
I still love them. But I see more in them now than I did in 2013.
Yu Chen's children are round, solemn and impossibly pink. Their hair is pulled into tight plaits tied with ribbons. They wear Mao-era collars, and some wear the red scarf of the Young Pioneers. A few carry the faint features of Mao himself, or of other officials. Behind some of them stand rows of children with the same face.
Look at what they actually do, though. They don't salute. They yawn. They squeeze their eyes shut. They bawl, two at a time. They fix you with a flat, suspicious gaze. These are the children who were supposed to embody the future, and they have no intention of performing it for us.
What happens when a society turns a child into an image of its future?
That's the question the series asks, and it's why the affection matters. Satire usually needs a target. Yu Chen's target is the role, not the child. The babies stay lovable, even while the costume does its political work around them.
The Chinese title, 红孩儿, literally means "red child." It's an obvious nod to the children of revolutionary China. But 红孩儿 is also the name of Red Boy, the fire-breathing demon child of Journey to the West: tiny, powerful and completely ungovernable.
I can't confirm that Yu Chen intended the double meaning. It's widely read that way, and once you've seen it, you can't unsee it. A child dressed as the ideal citizen, who is also, quietly, a little demon. That tension is the whole series.
Who is Yu Chen?
- 1963Born in Guizhou Province, southwest China, the eldest child of an artistic family.
- 1981Graduates from the Guizhou art school and begins teaching there.
- 1988Graduates from the printmaking (engraving) department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing.
- 1993Returns to the Central Academy to teach. She is a professor there today.
- 1995Shows oil paintings, including Stubborn Girl, in the second World of Female Artists exhibition, Beijing.
- 1997Study tour and exhibition at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris.
- 2003Red Babies, Schoeni Art Gallery, Beijing and Hong Kong. Red Babies II follows in 2005.
- 2006–2008The Chen Family, with her brothers: Schoeni Art Gallery, Hong Kong (2006) and Today Art Museum, Beijing (2008).
- 2010WO.MEN: We Are Our Own Women, Schoeni Art Gallery, Hong Kong.
- 2016Art Stage Singapore.
Her work has sold at Sotheby's, Christie's and China Guardian.
The Chen family of Guizhou
Yu Chen didn't come to painting alone. All three Chen siblings are artists, and they have shown together more than once.
The eldest. Red Babies: the child as an image of the nation's hopes, painted with affection and a raised eyebrow.
The middle child. Central Academy of Fine Arts, 1993. He worked in publishing before painting, and he paints rows of figures with the same expression, except for one in each group.
The youngest brother, who showed alongside both siblings in The Chen Family.
Painters asking the same question
These artists aren't Yu Chen's followers, and I have no evidence they influenced one another. They're parallels: painters of her generation who also used children, families and repeated faces to show how a society shapes the individual.
He began Bloodline in 1993, after finding an old family photograph. His painted studio portraits turn the formality of the family picture into a record of inherited memory. Where Yu Chen paints the child as the future, Zhang paints the family as the past. Pace Gallery →
Born the same year as Yu Chen, he paints rows of near-identical children, often with a single figure breaking ranks. Her babies resist with a yawn. His resist by standing apart. Further reading →
Where this sits on Antakly Projects
July 16, 2013Xu De QiPublished two days before this post. His smiling "Chinese Girl" paintings celebrate a newfound wellbeing. Yu Chen's babies refuse to smile. Read them side by side.
2012Shi Wei's Skinny Girl seriesA male painter picturing China's women as "products of China's new open door policy." The same era, a very different gaze.
2011Middle East, Middle KingdomSeven Chinese artists, including the Gao Brothers and Liu Dao, on progress, censorship and the Maoist past.
The next generationChen FeiBorn in 1983 and raised under the one-child policy: the generation Yu Chen's babies anticipated, grown up and painting themselves.
Who is Yu Chen?
Yu Chen (余陈) is a Chinese painter born in 1963 in Guizhou Province. She graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 1988, returned to teach there, and is best known for her Red Babies series.
What is the Red Babies series?
Paintings of Chinese children in Mao-era clothing and Young Pioneer scarves, some with a likeness to Mao and other officials. It was first shown at Schoeni Art Gallery in Beijing and Hong Kong in 2003.
Are Yu Chen and Chen Yu the same artist?
No. Chen Yu (陈余, born 1969) is her younger brother, a painter of repeated figures. Their youngest brother, Chen Li, is also an artist, and the three have exhibited together as The Chen Family.
What does 红孩儿 mean?
Literally "red child." It is also the name of Red Boy, the demon child of the classic novel Journey to the West.
Red Babies images © Yu Chen. Archive thumbnails © Xu De Qi, Shi Wei, Chen Fei and the artists of Middle East, Middle Kingdom. Originally published on Ninu Nina, July 2013. Updated by Leila Antakly for Antakly Projects, 2026.
