Art Basel Exchange Circle: Lauren Tsai and Henry Chu on why the viewer is indispensable to the art-making process

Tsai, on the other hand, has turned to animated films as an inspiration for her new installation My Dream: Our Hill (2025) at Landmark. Through this dreamy yet imposing artwork, Tsai wants to capture “the visual language of animated films that [she] used to watch while growing up”.

Chu and Tsai’s backgrounds are entirely different too. While the former studied mathematics and engineering but has always had an interest in music, the latter is a model and actor. For Tsai, even as her modelling and acting career took off, she said she found refuge in her art. “There were certain times in which I felt that it was necessary to offload parts of myself and my ideas into another world or vessel,” she says. “The desire to create characters [such as her alter-ego Astrid] comes from wanting to preserve parts of myself and amplify them. They bring me a lot closer to my humanity.”

Tsai also gravitates towards creating analogue art. “There’s a sort of ruin and imperfection in analogue medium which is very important for me to capture in my videos and concepts.” She says she recently took up stop-motion animation, which despite being “anti-efficient, frustrating and imperfect, helped [her] present the creations in a new light”.

Chu, who mainly works with the digital medium, also makes sketches. To him, the tool and medium are less important than the artistic vision that goes into making an installation. “You need to ask yourself why this [medium] is important to you, and why you are choosing it,” he says. “Technology, AI and digital tools are making our lives easier, but it doesn’t make them interesting. We need to see what is important in our lives, and ask ourselves the same question for every decision we make.”

While Tsai and Chu’s installations—and the path they take to create them—are different in nature, both artists agree that it’s how the viewers interact with their artwork which makes it complete. Tsai says “Having the audience come in, interact [with the installation] and tell me their take on it help complete the story [of my art]. When compared to going into a typical gallery space, walking through an immersive installation makes you very aware of your physicality and presence.”

Chu adds, “When I finish my work, it’s only 50 per cent complete. The other 50 per cent comes from the audience. I need you all to [visit] my work, interact [with it] and finish the story.”

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