PENG-HSUN CHEN

One day while tidying my room, I stared at the piles of assignments I had done for school and suddenly realized that I had become nothing more than a puppet of the credit system—always being pulled forward, but having lost my sense of self. Each assignment was just something to hand in; every sleepless night was simply about not failing. It felt like I had lost the passion and meaning behind creating.

So I sat and gazed at the pile of assignments, and in that moment, I unexpectedly discovered an answer I had never seen before.

At last, I found a goal: to search for interesting lines within that heap of clothes, to explore the possibilities of silhouette in mismatched garments. I began deconstructing and reconstructing the garments I had made or wanted to make—reimagining my earlier, immature attempts with a more refined aesthetic and technique.

I also incorporated the structure of a puppet to symbolize how, during my first three years of university, I wandered aimlessly like a marionette. Through this work, I hoped to summarize everything I had learned over the course of four years.