Howie TSUI

Howie Tsui (徐浩恩, b. 1978, Hong Kong – raised in Lagos and Thunder Bay) is based in Vancouver. Working in ink brush, sound sculptures, lenticular lighboxes and installation, Tsui constructs tense, fictive environments that undermine venerated art forms and narrative genres, often stemming from the Chinese literati tradition. He employs a stylized form of derisive and exaggerated imagery as a way to satirize and disarm broadening regimes and their programs of cultural hegemony. The most notable branch of his practice involves the use of algorithmic animation sequences to raise questions around order, chaos and the potential of social harmony through self-organized societies. Tsui synthesizes diverging socio-cultural anxieties around superstition, surveillance and otherness through a distinctly outsider lens to cast light onto liminal and diasporic experiences.

Selected Solo Exhibitions

Glenbow Museum (2023), Art Windsor-Essex (2022), Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (2021), The Power Plant, Toronto (2020), Ringling Museum of Art, US (2020); Burrard Arts Foundation, Vancouver (2020); Ottawa Art Gallery (2019); OCAT Museum, Xi’an (2018); and Vancouver Art Gallery (2017).

Selected Group Exhibitions

Macao International Art Biennale (2023); Art Gallery of New South Wales (2022), Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2021); Vancouver Art Gallery (2021); Asia Now, Paris (2019); Ottawa Art Gallery (2018); Art Labor, Shanghai (2015); Dalhousie Art Gallery, Nova Scotia (2015); Para Site, Hong Kong (2014); the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2014); and the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco (2013).

Public Collections

National Gallery of Canada, Vancouver Art Gallery, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Canada Council Art Bank, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Ottawa Art Gallery, City of Ottawa, Global Affairs Canada, RBC Collection, Centre d’exposition de Baie-Saint-Paul and M+ Museum of Visual Culture.