Tatler+ West Kowloon Cultural District
Following her solo show at 2019’s Venice Biennale, artist Shirley Tse returns to Hong Kong with the exhibition "Shirley Tse: Stakes and Holders"—now showing at M+ Pavilion in West Kowloon Cultural District
Everything is a negotiation, a constant push and pull between different sides until common ground is found and settled on. Hong Kong-born and Los Angeles-based artist Shirley Tse explores this concept in her exhibit Shirley Tse: Stakes and Holders. It first served as Hong Kong’s participation at the 58th Venice Biennale as Shirley Tse: Stakeholders, Hong Kong in Venice last year, and now finds itself in her land of birth.
Tse has an extensive background in the arts, being a faculty member at the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles, and having exhibited at globally-known institutions like the Museum of Modern Art, New Museum of Contemporary Art, MoMA PS1, Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, and New Zealand’s Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, amongst others. Having Tse’s work at the Biennale was historic in a way, as she was the first female artist that presented a solo show at the exhibition’s Hong Kong pavilion.
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Shirley Tse: Stakes and Holders was put together by guest curator Christina Li, and is currently on display at the M+ Pavilion, in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District. Comprising two installations, Negotiated Difference and Playcourt, Tse and Li modify the Biennale exhibit to respond to the current exhibition space, which also serves as inspiration for Tse’s works.
Negotiated Differences is an expansive sculpture scattered across the exhibition space. Here, objects made from wood, metal, and plastic elements are all seamlessly interconnected, despite of their different forms. Tse was drawn to using objects shaped by a wood lathe or through carving, and connects them using joints made through 3D printing. It’s a marriage of differences, the old and new; subtraction in the form of carving and addition in the form of additive manufacturing.