Sami Tsang

Many Chinese proverbs that I was raised hearing have become ingrained in my subconscious. In many ways, these have both felt limiting but also have given me structure to push against and to build upon in my artwork.
The four that stand out are:
家丑不可外扬, which means “the problems that happen within the family need to be solved internally or it will bring shame on the family.”  This belief was ingrained in me through my upbringing.  I deal with a lot of personal events in my work that are encoded and referenced elliptically.  I’ve developed a visual language filled with imaginary characters, animals, humor and Chinese symbology to reference deeply personal events.  This is a direct reference to the proverb.
There is another one, 家家有本难念的经, which means “every family goes through its problems.” I stay mindful of the stories I tell through my sculptures and I want to connect with others whose culture may not be allowing them to share their struggles. I want them to know they are not alone and that every family, including mine, has their problems.
血濃於水, “blood is thicker than water.” This idiom originated in Germany and became popular in England at the beginning of the 19th century. Since the 20th century, “blood is thicker than water” has been widely used by Chinese people. It is a metaphor to describe inseparable family ties.
Finally, 牙尖嘴利, “sharp teeth and sharp tongue.” This is typically used by older people to younger people who are trying to express their opinions. In my experience, it’s often used to put younger people in their place as older people in my culture often take a younger person’s attempt to express their opinion as being challenged.

I always title my work after the piece is completed. My process starts by asking myself, what is pressing and urgent in this work? And continuously try to find the answer as I create. The titles are self-referential and autobiographical, however, once I’ve completed the piece and it’s in the world, I become a bit more detached. Ultimately, I very much want viewers to have their own interpretation and connection to the work and the titles are not didactic.

I’ve always found verbal communication difficult and confusing – this is both because I faced a language barrier when I immigrated to Canada at age twelve and also through my own cultural heritage of deference to elders as a youngest child. This experience has driven me to develop a visual language that I use in my work.  I find expressing myself through visual art very liberating.

In terms of duality, one example I’m fascinated by is the panda, which is a treasured and symbolic animal in both Western and Chinese cultures. The white fur is to camouflage in the snow, and black for the shade. This reminds me of the conflict I feel holding both Chinese and Western cultures and the ‘code switching’ I feel depending on where I am and who I’m with. So I definitely play with this concept of multiple identities and the hidden self.
I am also really influenced by comics, which were a daily ritual for me as a child. I love the frozen action,  rich visual information and bubble speech, and the scale of the panel indicates the importance of content and narrative pace. Comics also employ visual cues for movement, action and speed, which have had an impact on my work. When I illustrate emotion like anger, I intensify the imagery with directional line art. When I illustrate emotion like anxiety, I use the dry brush painting technique to generate vibration within characters.

I studied traditional Chinese painting for several years while growing up in Hong Kong. I'm intrigued by the shades of black that the ink offers and how the water and pigment submerge and affect one another. It is crucial to pay attention to the liquid that is held within the brush. Once the brush tip is laid on the rice paper, an expression is made – similar to when certain actions are made, or once words are spoken. There is no going back, there is no erasing, there is only going forward. To me, the beauty in Chinese painting is the honesty between the painter and the emotions laid on the rice paper.
I find it excitingly challenging to need a level of certainty before making a strike. In Chinese painting, line art is also an important language for the painter to form images vividly. I am urged to pay attention to lyricism and freehand brushwork. The lines are richly expressed in the most concise language. There are subjective, emotional lines both long and thick, curved and thin, fast and slow, straight, rough, and soft. They all intermittently generate rhythms, express emotions, and have rich artistic effects.

I’m so excited and proud to present my work at Claire Oliver Gallery in New York City.  As the center of so much incredible visual art, it’s a dream to have an exhibition in the city and definitely feels like a big stage to be on. As someone whose work is autobiographical, it’s very much part of the process to push myself and my work out of my internal sphere and comfort zone. I welcome others’ interaction and interpretation with my work and I hope to spark dialogue with a larger audience.

I started the mirror series because I wanted to create a gateway for viewers to be a part of my work. Many themes in my work are universal. That’s a bit of my process in general, most of my work starts out very personally, but I always intend for it to exist in the greater world. I encourage viewers to have their own interpretations and respond to my work in their own unique way.

I enjoy making functional work and sculptural work. There are times in life when my studio practice is an emotional salve and there are other times when I simply want to make a fun object that doesn’t have any meaning behind it.

To keep art-making passionate rather than ‘work’, I have to do what excites me. The studio is a place for me to feel excited and passionate, I could be doing simple sketches, painting on canvas, making functional cups, or creating monumental sculptures – it’s all on a continuum of visual expression.

For many years, I’ve carried the mindset of feeling and being small. Working on a large scale symbolizes taking up space and being connected with others. I cannot lift the large works myself so this scale has forced me to collaborate and ask for help, which has felt really good both in art making and in life.
Through showing my work in this exhibition, I wish to expand my ability to tell stories and reach a wider audience. Coming from a background that has felt unseen and unable to feel fully understood, both in a domestic setting and also from a cultural perspective, being a storyteller feels very liberating.

At a certain point, I became interested in working with different materials. I returned to Canada during the pandemic (I had been in graduate school in NYC), there I no longer had access to ceramic facilities so I started working with polymer clay and paintings, acrylic, watercolor, color, pencil, and fabric. The experience was very grounding and reminded me of the freedom and fun of artistic expression when I was a child. During those early stages I was using Dollarama canvases to do paintings and I was using rice paper that I’d brought from Hong Kong to Canada ten years ago. I rediscovered a lost love of these materials that I now incorporate in all of my work. Sometimes, the content of my work is heavy for me and clay can be a difficult process. Using other materials has kept the process fun and exciting,  like there are no rules that I need to follow. Working with multimedia is a way to expand the work both visually and narratively. I let myself feel and invent the process as I go.

I am currently still exploring scale as well as exploring realism a bit more, rather than the cartoonistic style in my current work. I’ve found the comic book idiom to be a safe way to explore complex emotions and autobiographical events, but I’m ready to introduce more realism. I feel like this is part of the evolution of both myself and my work, which is really all about starting out feeling voiceless to now owning my own narrative.