Charwei Tsai

Tsai does not identify as a religious artist.[5] However, she memorized Buddhist writings in her youth, such as the Heart Sutra, a text often used to practice calligraphy.[6] After moving to New York in 2002, Tsai experimented with writing the sutra on organic materials, starting with flowers.[3] The artist Cai Guo-Qiang encouraged her work, and recommended her for a young artists' exhibition titled J'en rêve (2005) at the Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain in Paris, where she presented the works Mushroom Mantra, Tofu Mantra, and Iris Mantra.[1][7][6]

By writing on ephemeral materials and letting them decay, Tsai sought to express the Buddhist concepts of emptiness and the transient nature of existence.[1][3][5] She diversified the writing surfaces in her artwork to include mirrors, photographs, plants, trees, and shells.[1][5][6] Tsai wrote the sutra on the seeds, roots, and flowers of a lotus plant and placed them on-site in a temple for the 2006 Singapore Biennial.[1][8] That same year she created a site-specific work for the Bratsera Hotel in Hydra, Greece, writing on the trunk and branches of an olive tree.[1][9] In 2009, she wrote the sutra on mushrooms in collaboration with Buddhist monks and nuns for the Asia Pacific Triennial in Brisbane, Australia;[6][8] and inscribed a text by literary critic Elaine Scarry on flower petals for an installation at the Church of Saint-Séverin in Paris.[6]

In 2011, Tsai created the video installation Ah! in an underground passageway in Singapore, which featured a choir repeating a meditative chant, and a video of the artist writing with ink in water.[6] Her exhibition Meeting Point (Edouard Malingue Gallery, Hong Kong, 2014), alongside Taiwanese artist Wu Chi-Tsung, showed photographs and video of incense burning and becoming ashes. For Plane Tree Mantra (National Museum of Natural History, France, 2014), the artist inscribed the sutra on the bark of a large tree in the Jardin des plantes in Paris.[7]

Tsai participated in the 2016 Biennale of Sydney with an installation in the city's Mortuary Station, which included large incense coils bearing the Hundred Syllable Mantra, and a video work titled Bardo based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead.[3][7][10][11][12][13] Bardo was shown at Tsai's solo exhibition Universe of Possibilities (TKG+, Taipei, 2016), which also featured planet-like macro photographs of sea shells discarded from Vietnamese fishing boats.[3][14]

Tsai's first solo exhibition in the U.K., Bulaubulau (Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, Manchester, 2018) displayed large pieces of driftwood from Taiwan inscribed with the sutra, and watercolor paintings with the Buddhist text inked on rice paper.[7][5][15][16] Her solo show Root of Desire (TKG+, Taipei, 2018) worked the Vimalakirti Sutra into a series of videos and drawings, and featured a multimedia installation Water Moon (2017).[17][18]

For the group exhibition The Power of Intention: Reinventing the (Prayer) Wheel (Rubin Museum of Art, New York, 2019), Tsai contributed an ink painting and an installation of spiral incense coils.[19] Tsai joined a multi-generational group exhibition PLUS X (2019) at TKG+, a celebration of the Taipei-based gallery's tenth anniversary.[20]

Tsai's video work Numbers (2020) was commissioned by a human rights art festival on Green Island, Taiwan. In the video, the artist writes numbers in ink on an ice cube which melt away, with a voice-over by the granddaughter of Yang Kui, who was a political prisoner on the island.[21]

Tsai was an online guest lecturer for the "Studio Language" course at Harvard University during the Fall 2020 semester.[4]

In 2021, newly commissioned works by the artist were presented at Live Forever Foundation's Vital Space and the National Taichung Theatre in Taichung City, Taiwan, demonstrating a collaborative approach to making artworks.[22]

Tsai created a series of short films titled Lanyu—Three Stories (2012) about the Tao people native to Orchid Island off the southeastern coast of Taiwan. Lanyu Seascapes describes the externalities of a nuclear waste storage facility on the island, while Shi Na Paradna depicts an elderly man reciting a prayer ritual by the sea, and Hair Dance documents a ceremonial performance by the women of the tribe.[7][5][23][15][24]

Following the 2015 Nepal Earthquake, Tsai visited the makeshift camps in Kathmandu to reflect on the conditions of the victims in the intervening years, and explored their plight in the short film Songs of Chuchepati Camp (2017), recording the songs and stories of the individuals living there.[24][23]

Tsai created the video work Hear Her Singing (2017) concerning the refugee situation in the UK, which was commissioned by the Hayward Gallery. Tsai recorded the songs of detainees and asylum seekers at Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre, and held singing workshops with the charity Women for Refugee Women. The final work was shown at the Southbank Centre in London.[4][24][25] The film was exhibited in the Taiwan Pavilion curated by Alia Swastika for Biennale Jogja XV.[26]

Tsai filmed songs by foreign boat workers in Taiwan for Songs of Migrant Workers of Kaohsiung Harbor (2018). The three "singing" films from Nepal, the UK, and Taiwan, created with filmmaker Tsering Tashi Gyalthang, are collected in a single work titled Songs We Carry.[4]

Bulaubulau (2018) documents the efforts of an indigenous village in Yilan County, Taiwan to sustainably maintain both tradition and modern life in the face of natural disasters, industrialization, and economic upheaval.[5][15][7]

Tsai founded the art journal Lovely Daze, which has published more than ten issues and special editions since 2005. Each issue is dedicated to a single theme related to her work or interests, and presents artwork and writing by other artists rather than reviews or art criticism.[1][4][6][14] Lovely Daze is in the library collections of museums such as MoMA, Tate Modern, the Centre Pompidou, and the Queensland Art Gallery.[3][2]

Tsai is represented by TKG+, Taipei and Mor Charpentier, Paris.