Totally Unique Thing. AI generated image, glazed ceramic. Installed on bespoke wallpaper, designed by Perry and produced by Liberty of London
The Wallace Collection, a storied historic mansion in London that houses an extraordinary, far-ranging collection of art and objects, invited the artist Grayson Perry to embed and create an exhibition that responds to their collections. Collected during the18th and 19th Centuries, the museum is dripping in Rococo, houses breathtaking Old Master paintings, amour, ceramics, medieval relics and sculpture. It would be, for a lesser artist, a daunting assignment.
Tansy Xiao is a curator, artist, writer, translator, and an overtly out of the box thinker. She shares with Art Spiel some insights on her upcoming curatorial project at Radiator, her art-making, as well as translation and writing processes.
AS: Tell me a bit about yourself and what brought you to art – writing, translation, curation and making.
Tansy Xiao: I wasn’t properly schooled, neither did I consider myself an artist when I was travelling around and painting abstract murals in exchange for food and accommodation. Now you might call it an unprompted residency. During my long trips and brief sojourns, I would write book length letters to my friends, with a mutual understanding that they were not obligated to reply. I joined and formed communities, then left them, until I have relatively settled in New York, a city with such transience that the fear of being trapped in a constricted niche no longer haunts me. That’s when I began my practice as a curator and translator. If I were to describe my status quo now, I’d quote D. H. Lawrence’s last paragraph in Rainbow:
