Su-Mei Tse

The native form of this personal name is Tse Su-Mei. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals.
Su-Mei Tse
Born (1973-01-29) 29 January 1973 (age 51)
Luxembourg City, Luxembourg
NationalityLuxembourgian
EducationLuxembourg Conservatory, Conservatoire de Musique, École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Appliqués, École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts
AwardsFondation Prince Pierre de Monaco Prize for Contemporary Art 2009
SR-Medienkunstpreis 2006
Edward Steichen Award 2005
Golden Lion 2003
Prix d'Art Robert Schuman 2001
Su-Mei Tse: Still from Les Balayeurs du désert (2003)

Su-Mei Tse (born 1973) is a Luxembourgian musician, artist and photographer. Her work combines photography, video, installations and music. In 2003, she received the Golden Lion award at the Venice Biennale for the best national participation.[1]

Early life

The daughter of a Chinese father, a violinist, and an English mother, a pianist, Tse was born on 29 January 1973 in Luxembourg City. First training as a classical cellist at the Luxembourg Conservatory, she won the Cello First Prize in 1991 before continuing her studies at the Conservatoire de Musique in Paris. In 1996, she also received a diploma in Textile & Printing from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Appliqués. Finally, in 2000, she graduated in plastic arts at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris.[2][3]

Career

Tse's work is the result of a constantly shifting combination of photography, video, and objects in which sound, rhythm and music play an important part.[4] Her early works include La Marionnette (1999) where her performance on the cello is continually interrupted by the puppet strings attached to her limbs, creating a new composition. In Das wohltemperierte Klavier (2001), the music is ruined by the splints bandaged to the player's fingers.[3]

Her breakthrough came in 2003 with Golden Lion she won for her exhibition "Air conditioned" in the Luxembourg pavilion at the Venice Biennial. Her video projection Les balayeurs du désert (The Desert Sweepers) shows street sweepers in their distinctive Paris uniforms pointlessly sweeping away at the desert sand to the soft sound of brooms against asphalt. The second major work "The Echo", also a video, depicts an Alpine scene in which a tiny figure plays the cello, the simple sounds of the instrument being reflected by the mountains. These and the other components of the exhibition were in fact a play on the "ɛ:r" sound in air conditionné denoting the concepts of ère (era), aire (area), air (air and tune).[1][3]

Tse was selected for a solo exhibition at the Renaissance Society in 2005 titled, "The Ich-Manifestation".[5] The exhibit contained five video works. Her exhibit "Floating Memories" (2009) at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is an installation merging sound, sculpture, and a video projection in which a perpetually revolving gramophone record on an old rug brings back memories of childhood.[6]

Su-Mei Tse is represented by Peter Blum Gallery in New York.[7]

Awards

References

  1. ^ a b "Biennale de Venise: Lion d'or attribué à l'artiste luxembourgeoise Su-Mei Tse" Archived 2012-03-08(Date mismatch) at the Wayback Machine, Gouvernement luxembourgeois. (in French) Retrieved 12 December 2010.
  2. ^ "Su-Mei Tse", MoMA PS1. Retrieved 13 December 2010.
  3. ^ a b c "Su-Mei Tse: air conditioned", Musée d'Art Moderne Grand Duc Jean, Luxembourg. Retrieved 13 December 2010.
  4. ^ Mariko Takei, Yurie Hatano, "Su-Mei Tse", Shift Magazine. Retrieved 13 December 2010.
  5. ^ Su-Mei Tse at the Renaissance Society Archived 2012-09-07 at archive.today
  6. ^ "Su-Mei Tse presents New Multi-Media Installation at Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum", Art Knowledge News. Retrieved 13 December 2010.
  7. ^ "Peter Blum Gallery". peterblumgallery.com. Retrieved 2015-08-25.