For Asian-American and Pacific Islanders Heritage month, Yancey Richardson Gallery presents work by Chinese-American photographer, performance artist, provocateur, and documentarian Tseng Kwong Chi.  Combining performance and photography, political satire and personal identity, Tseng’s pioneering work exemplifies the art of the eighties while anticipating the social, political and philosophical themes of the present day.

Born in Hong Kong and raised in Vancouver by Chinese parents, Tseng moved to Manhattan in 1978, becoming a fixture of New York’s downtown art scene and a close friend of Keith Haring whose work and activities he documented.  Soon after arriving, Tseng began the series East Meets West, photographing himself at iconic tourist locales throughout America, wearing a “Mao Suit,” dark sunglasses and an enigmatic expression.  Pictured at the Grand Canyon, the Statue of Liberty and other monumental sites, Tseng’s persona suggests that of an austere, visiting dignitary, paying homage to sites signifying American greatness.  Describing himself as both an “ambiguous ambassador” and an “inquisitive traveler”, Tseng mischievously and subtly investigated core issues of outsider and identity politics, while inverting the racial power dynamic.

Deceased in 1990 at age thirty-nine from AIDS-related illness, Tseng has been exhibited and collected by numerous museums including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Tate Britain, London; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., among others. In 2015, a retrospective Tseng Kwong Chi: Performing For the Camera was held at the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, and the Grey Art Gallery at New York University.  A selection of Tseng’s East Meets West will be featured on the facade of the new M+ Museum, Hong Kong in Fall 2021.