Tansy Xiao – The Echo of Journeying

Domestic Language, multimedia installation, 2017

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:

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Cecile Chong – The Layers Beneath

In her layered paintings and installations Cecile Chong brings to life notions of “otherness”, how cultural filters make us see each other. Her departure point derives organically from her experiences since early childhood. Here she shares some of these experiences, the genesis of her diverse body of work, and her upcoming projects.

Cecile Chong, DNA Matching, 2018
Encaustic and mixed media on wood
11 x 8 inches, photo courtesy of the artist

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