Henry Tsang is a visual and media artist whose work has been exhibited internationally. His projects incorporate digital media, video, photography, language and sculptural elements in the exploration of the relationship between the public, community and identity through global flows of people, culture and capital. Examples include video installations Orange County, 2004, and Olympus, 2006, shot in California, Beijing, Torino and Vancouver, demonstrating a complex understanding of overlapping urban and socio-political spaces; Napa North, 2008, exploring the relationship between wine, real estate and cultural translation in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley; and the Maraya project, with M. Simon Levin and Glen Lowry, that investigates the uncanny similarities between Vancouver’s False Creek and the Dubai Marina in the United Arab Emirates. His public artwork, Welcome to the Land of Light, is a 100 metre-long installation located on the seawall handrail along Vancouver’s False Creek. Comprised of fibre optic cable lighting and marine-grade aluminum lettering, it literally underscores Chinook Jargon, a 19th Century local trade language, and the English that replaced it, to speak about the promise of technology and how different cultures have come to live together in that part of the world.
Curatorial projects include Self Not Whole: Cultural Identity & Chinese-Canadian Artists in Vancouver, 1991; Racy Sexy: Race, Culture and Sexuality, 1993; and City at the End of Time: Hong Kong 1997, 1997), spanning the local, national and international. Henry Tsang has a BFA from the University of British Columbia and a MFA from the University of California, Irvine. He received the VIVA Award in 1993 and is currently an Associate Professor at Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver, Canada.
