New York 1979
TSENG KWONG CHI
TSENG KWONG CHI, 1979
In the suit of a Chinese dignitary, Tseng Kwong Chi travelled the world taking self-portraits against icons of Western, and later Eastern, civilisation. Part of a group of radical artists working out of New York in the late 70s and 80s, Tseng was born to parents exiled from Hong Kong but considered himself a citizen of the world. In his portraiture he is emotionless, wearing dark glasses and his ‘Mao Suit’, quick release cable in hand – an ambiguous ambassador. The images are funny, yet in their humour and in their repetition, there is an unplaceable profundity. Kwong Chi was playful and ambiguous about his work – a gay, radical young man in the suit of authoritarianism standing in front of the symbols of liberation and capitalism. They are not critiquing, nor celebrating, they are simply a way of placing himself within, and separate from, the many worlds he felt he belonged to.