Tsang Kin-Wah was born in 1976 in Shantou, Guangdong Province, China, and currently lives and works in Hong Kong. Navigating relationships among words, images, and languages, Tsang’s text-based work spans various mediums: wall prints, silkscreen, and digital video projections. His wallpaper prints usually feature floral patterns that recall the swirls of 19th-century decorative wallpapers. Upon closer inspection, however, details reveal the patterns to be composed of text in both English and Chinese. Their provocative and sometimes offensive meanings mock art, the art market, the artist, and his Chinese ethnicity, as well as broader cultural issues. In 2009, Tsang began experimenting with new media and produced The Seven Seals, an ongoing series of digital video installation works that takes its name from the New Testament’s Book of Revelation. Tsang’s practice allows a range of interpretations and encourages viewers to search for the relationship between image and text, between pictographic and phonetic writing systems.
Tsang has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions at venues that include the Sharjah Calligraphy Biennial, United Arab Emirates (2014), the Asia Society, Hong Kong (2014), the 7th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale, China (2012), the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2011), the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung (2011), the Guangdong Times Museum, Guangzhou, China (2011), the 17th Biennale of Sydney (2010), Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul (2010), the 10th Biennale de Lyon, France (2009), the Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai (2008 and 2007), and the Hong Kong Museum of Art (2007, 2003 and 2001), among others. He has been selected to represent Hong Kong at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015.
