Li-E Chen (a. V. a.) (b. in Chaozhou, China) moved to London in 1997. Her practice involves performance, visual and mixed-media arts, and uses silence, nothingness, and 'thinking postures' as principles for its creative process. She was influenced by artists such as Robert Wilson, Tehching Hsieh, John Cage, Merce Cunningham and Samuel Beckett, philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and mathematician Kurt Godel. She creates performances, participatory events, and publications using propositional forms, inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein, to explore the aesthetic of everyday life and art. She aims to create artworks that do not rely on narrative or representational meanings. In 2017-18, she conducted a One Year R&D: A Silent Opera on the Life and Art of Tehching Hsieh which she begun her early conceptualisation of a Taiwanese-New York based artist Tehching Hsieh’s six life durational work undertaken in 1978 - 1999, to a 'silent opera'. She collaborated with organisations and artists in the USA, Europe, and South America, held events at the Live Arts Development Agency, Southbank Centre and Tete-a-Tete Opera Festival. Her recent works 'Proposition For Self-Development 2020' (through the Arts Council England's Emergency Response fund) and 'Proposition For Self-Care 2021' both explore her new artistic practice. In May 2021, she changed her artist name as a V a when her daughter turned 8 months old, and begun her new life and art making.