b. 1974 in Taiwan
Since the mid-1990s, Tsui Kuang-yu has been making performance videos in series. These works document him acting in direct environments, from Taipei to London, from Amsterdam to Liverpool. His undertakings often reflect his routes of travel and city’s of residency participation and respond to the local human condition in each urban habitat, with regard to modernity and hypermodernity. His actions usually involve mimicking roles suggested to him by the environment, that question the hidden and stereo-typically understood relationship between human beings and their urban habitat. At the same time, Tsui’s actions project an invisible city, one which appears out of place and is often mistaken for as something else. This problematic encounter centres on the fact that our habitat contains layers of surface, which envelopes human subjectivity. Tsui suggests that the only way to reveal the possibilities of real action this surface must be penetrated by strategies of disappearing oneself, interjecting absurdities, fragmenting preconceived realities, superimposing alternative codes of behaviour and embedding all these in the existing social structure.
Tsui Kuang-yu was represented at the Taiwan Pavilion in the 'Venice Biennale', 2005, and has participated in the 'Liverpool Biennial', 2006; 'Werkleitz Biennial', 2006, Halle/Saal, Germany; 'Thermocline of Art-New Asian Waves', 2006, ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe; 'Contour Biennial', 2006, Mechelen; 'Biennial Cuvée', OK Center for Contemporary Art, Linz, 2008.