Howie Tsui (徐浩恩) is based in Vancouver. Working in ink brush, sound sculptures, lenticular light-boxes and installation, Tsui constructs tense, fictive environments that undermine venerated art forms and narrative genres, often stemming from the Chinese literati tradition. He employs a stylised form of derisive and exaggerated imagery as a way to satirise and disarm broadening regimes and their programs of cultural hegemony.
Read MoreThe most notable branch of his practice involves the use of algorithmic animation sequences to raise questions around order, chaos and the potential of social harmony through self-organised societies. Tsui synthesizes diverging socio-cultural anxieties around superstition, trauma, surveillance and otherness through a distinctly outsider lens to cast light onto liminal and diasporic experiences.
Solo exhibitions: Hanart TZ, Hong Kong (2024); Glenbow Museum (2023); Art Windsor-Essex (2022); Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (2021); The Power Plant, Toronto (2020); Ringling Museum of Art, US (2020); Burrard Arts Foundation, Vancouver (2020); Ottawa Art Gallery (2019); OCAT Museum, Xi'an (2018) and the Vancouver Art Gallery (2017). Select group exhibitions: Macao International Art Biennale 2023; Art Gallery of New South Wales (2022); Tai Kwun Contemporary; Hong Kong (2021), Vancouver Art Gallery (2021); Asia Now, Paris (2019); Dalhousie Art Gallery, Halifax (2015); Para Site, Hong Kong (2014); the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2014); and the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco (2013). Public collections: National Gallery of Canada, Vancouver Art Gallery, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Canada Council Art Bank, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Ottawa Art Gallery, City of Ottawa, Global Affairs Canada, RBC Collection, Centre d'exposition de Baie-Saint-Paul and M+ Museum of Visual Culture. Tsui received Canada Council's Joseph Stauffer Prize in 2005 and was long-listed for the Sobey Art Award in 2018. He holds a BFA from the University of Waterloo.
Text courtesy the artist
