Pien's practice is drawing-based. For his cut-outs, he uses an
X-Acto knife as his drawing tool and traditional Japanese paper, or he constructs maze-like spaces using walls of crinkly paper grounds with drawings on them and through these large-scale installations he fashions a conduit into feeling and thought. He also is a photographer. In 2019, the
Glenbow Museum (Calgary) held an exhibition titled
Ed Pien: Our Beloved of 144 framed photographs of flowers hung together in a monumental, wall-filling installation to commemorate decorated gravesites at a cemetery in
Santiago, Chile which is the final resting place for many political dissidents and victims of the reign of
Augusto Pinochet between 1973 and 1990. Also in 2019, he made a ghostly new print at
NSCAD in collaboration, as he said, with the Atlantic Ocean. In 2020, to bear witness to the disruptions and unease brought on by the pandemic, he concentrated on making his
Invasive Species, series of green-coloured drawings inspired by decorative Chinoiserie patterns as well as carefully observed plants and insects thriving in his own garden. His work has been exhibited extensively throughout Canada and internationally, including, among others, at the Drawing Centre (New York), the
Victoria & Albert Museum, London; The Canadian Culture Centre in Paris; the 18th Edition of the
Sydney Biennale and the 5th edition of the
Moscow Biennale.
The Corridor of Rain was featured at the Curitiba Biennial, in Brazil in 2018. It marked a change in his work into documentary film and portrait photography. Pien's work is represented by Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain (PFOAC), a
contemporary art gallery in Montreal, Quebec. ==Selected public collections==