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Ena Chang
張其心

A home-schooled girl who has always learned outside of the establishment. At her age of 15, she drew a little girl and a monster. Then she drew more, and then more. At first, she posted the drawings on her Facebook page. The monsters, although big and ugly, were adorable. Instead of being frightened by the monsters, some of her friends found them to be healing. She is delighted that her work has been accepted, and even more delighted that they have a healing effect. In Love Letters from the Monsters, Ena Chang projects familial love, friendship and romantic love onto these monsters in a work that she says reflects her wild adolescent emotions.  Her works were exhibited in Garden City bookstore in 2018.

Works

Rights sold: China    Faced with monsters everywhere in her life, the little girl grows a horn and a tail and becomes a strange girl. To the long-necked fish monster, she says: “What do you fear? Is it the way I look or the way you look, or your heart?” To the mushroom monster: “It’s nothing, just an afternoon where there is nothing. You should know that doubt and trust are created at the same time.” These conversations obviously point to something, perhaps an unpleasant, minute detail in your life or mine, or hers. Throughout the dialogues and pictures, the little girl grows stronger. And how does the story end? The author leaves us with a deeply healing scene, waiting for us to find the answers together.   When the sixteen-year-old girl picked up the drawing paint brush, she drew monsters dug up from the deepest corners of her innocent heart. Within a growing body lives a small child. Ena Chang’s monsters do not terrify; they are monsters begot from emotions, their appearances nothing but the crystallization of the paradoxical emotions of love, hate, adoration and grudges in our hearts.    
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