Yang-Tze Tong’s large-scale calligraphic works have entered the realm of contemporary painting, as she continues to push the limits of the ancient art of Chinese script through crossover works, collaborating with video artists, jazz musicians, choreographers, and fashion designers to produce experimental pieces that resonate with the audiences of today.

After studying Fine Arts at Taiwan Normal University, she went to the United States to further her art education. In New York, she began to infuse abstractionism into her strict Yan Zhenqing-style training and soon became the foremost artist of contemporary calligraphy. Deconstructed or reconstructed, her characters have broken free from tradition, at the same time renewing the viewer’s appreciation for the mystery and complexity behind Chinese calligraphy.

The Taipei Fine Arts Museum held Moving Ink, a major retrospective of her work in December 2019, which the artist only agreed to after it was reconfigured as “retrospection as a way forward,” as she is firmly exploring new boundaries to cross. In 2020, Cornell University in collaboration with the Taipei Cultural Center in New York held the Tong Yang-Tze: Immortal at the River exhibition at the Johnson Museum of Art.