Cyrus Tang's practice reflects sentiments of nostalgia through translation of disappearance into remembrance and fantasy. Her work examines the paradox of reconstructing ephemeral mental images and sensations in permanent materials. Disappearance is a notion that an absence can be a unique and expanded form of presence. It retains an excess meaning and experience.
Read MoreThe process of capturing the lost implies a particular mental orientation; a sense of lost promise combined, perhaps, with a desire to redeem that promise in the future. It is a contemplative mode of thought that might lead to nostalgia and resignation or to renewed activism as the past is overlaid with, and tested against, the present. Tang's works suggest a phantasmic site of loss: an eternal absence of the sort encountered in her visual images.
Throughout her practice, Tang employs a range of variously permanent and ephemeral materials including clay, water, ash, steam, snow, human's heartbeat, animal bones, and human hair. These produce a visual representation suggestive of the contrast and contradiction between appearance and disappearance, and between ephemerality and permanence.
Born in Hong Kong, Cyrus Tang moved to Australia in 2003. She completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) at the Victoria College of the Arts, Melbourne, in 2004, and her Master of Fine Arts (Research) at Monash University, Melbourne, in 2009. Cyrus has participated in a number of residency programmes, including Helsinki International Artist Program (2013); The National Art Studio in South Korea (2012); CiteĢ Internationale des Arts, Paris (2009); and the Banff Centre, Canada (2008). She was the recipient of the Asialink Grant (2012); the Australian Council for the Arts Skills and Arts Development Grant (2011) and New Work (Emerging) Grant (2009); the Georges Mora Fellowship (2008); Theodor Urback Encouragement Award (2004); and The National Gallery of Victoria-Trustee Award (2003). Her works have been shown across Australia and in various countries internationally, including Finland, South Korea, Singapore, Japan, France, China and Sweden. She currently lives and works in Melbourne, Australia.
Text courtesy Arc One Gallery
