ART-PRESENTATION: Shirley Tse-Stakes and Holders

Over the past two decades, the Los Angeles–based Hong Kong artist Shirley Tse has addressed the various meanings and possible interpretations of materials and things. Her sculptural practice has evolved from considering plastics as the prime signifier of globalisation through circulation, standardisation, and industrialisation to examining plastic as an adjective, and the resonance of plasticity, movement, and multiplicity.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: M+ Archive

The exhibition “Shirley Tse: Stakes and Holders” renews and responds to “Shirley Tse: Stakeholders, Hong Kong in Venice”, Hong Kong’s presence at the 58th Venice Biennale. The exhibition in Hong Kong includes new configurations of Shirley Tse’s site-responsive installations “Negotiated Differences” and “Playcourt”, the exhibition draws attention to architectural components of the site and of the urban context, and also emphasises social, political, historical, and cultural elements of Hong Kong. “Negotiated Differences” is a sprawling, rhizome-like installation of 3D-printed joints and hand-turned wooden forms that stretches across the pavilion’s spaces, drawing attention to aspects of the architectural design. Balusters, handrails, bowling pins, and abstract objects are connected by wooden, metal, and plastic elements, bringing together craft, mechanical, and digital technologies into an integrated whole. For the Hong Kong installation, new wooden components are included that refer to the city’s contemporary material culture. The COVID-19 pandemic prevented Tse and Li from participating in the installation of the work in person. It is installed through extensive conversation between the artist in Los Angeles, the curator in Amsterdam, and the M+ team in Hong Kong. The exercise in improvisation draws out the responsiveness that is at the core of Tse’s approach and amplifies the urgency of negotiation and change in the way we work and live. “Playcourt” comprises sculptural amalgams of equipment and anthropomorphic forms, as well as radio antennas that pick up local non-commercial frequencies. The work emphasises the negotiation between people and space that is a fundamental component of play. This negotiation is at the heart of Stakes and Holders; the exhibition encourages us to connect across differences while exercising our agency as individuals, to recognise with empathy and sensitivity what is at stake and the extent to which we are all stakeholders.

Originating from Hong Kong but now a long-time resident of California, Tse both fully embodies and critically questions what it means to be a Hong Kong artist.Shirley Tse moved to the United States for her studies in 1990 and has been living in Los Angeles since then. In addition to her art practice, she has been a highly regarded teacher at the prestigious California Institute of the Arts since 2001. Although she has now lived longer in her adopted country than in her place of birth, Tse maintains close connections with where she came from, and where many of her family and friends continue to live. She speaks fondly about her childhood memories of growing up near the Kwai Chung Container Terminal—the epitome of Hong Kong’s status as a global hub of logistics and trade. She explains how this formative experience was a crucial inspiration for her early breakthrough body of work using styrofoam, a material that for her symbolises the circulation of goods and commodities and has helped her, as a sculptor, to delve into the multifaceted meaning of plasticity. In that sense, Tse’s early work is decisively about Hong Kong’s connectedness to the rest of the world as well as about her decision to migrate and settle in Los Angeles, one of the most multicultural and multi-ethnic cities in the world. For her latest body of work, conceived and presented in Venice, Tse deepens her reflection on how the world we live in has become exponentially more interconnected, through her formal and metaphorical expressions of the necessary interdependencies and inevitable conflicts that arise in such a world. A sculpture, by definition, is a form and volume in multidimensional space, and a sculptor must contend with physical laws such as gravity. For Tse, concepts and concerns are not forethoughts or afterthoughts to her sculpture. She works ‘through’ them ‘by means of’ her sculpture, with processes such as carving. An idea of particular import for Tse in recent years has been negotiation. We negotiate every day, all the time—with traffic, weather, time, ideologies, cultures, and, of course, people. As an artist and a teacher who is also an immigrant, Tse has no doubt learned to negotiate various conditions and situations, and these experiences have culminated in the two inspired works she created for her Venice exhibition: ‘Negotiated Differences’ and ‘Playcourt’. Both are Tse’s sculptural translations of the beauty and perils of our connections with and dependences on one another, and thus also of the vicissitudes of our collective life.

Info: Curators: Christina Li with Doryun Chong, M+ Pavilion, West Kowloon Cultural District, Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong, Duration: 1/7-4/10/20, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 11:00-18:00, www.mplus.org.hk