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Wu Tsang

Profile

Wu Tsang (1982, Worcester, Massachusetts) is an award-winning filmmaker and performance artist. Her works explore hidden histories, marginalized narratives, and the act of performing itself. Her documentary approach combines different types of storytelling with fantastical excursions into imaginary realms. Tsang’s first feature film Wildness (2012) documents an immigrant gay bar in MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, where she coorganized a weekly club for the bar’s longtime patrons and young queer artists of colour. The bar itself plays a leading role in the film, serving as an omniscient narrator and embodying the real and fantastical acts through which cultural fictions are formed and expressed. Her practice is deeply collaborative, most frequently associated with the performance group she co-founded in 2016 with artist Tosh Basco, known as Moved by the Motion. Moved by the Motion is a ‘roving band’ of interdisciplinary artists, including experimental cellist Patrick Belaga, dancer Josh Johnson, electronic musician Asma Maroof, and poet Fred Moten. Some of her longterm collaborators moved to Zurich with Tsang joining the Schauspielhaus ensemble and share her time in residence here: Tosh Basco (fka boychild), Asma Maroof and Josh Johnson. 

Recent works

2012 Wildness

2014 A day in the life of Bliss

2016 Duilian.

2016 Gravitational Feel

2019 Sudden Rise


Important invitations

La Biennale de Venezia, MoMa New York, Whitney Biennial, New Museum Triennial, Hammer Museum, Performa 11 New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum New York, Tate Modern London, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Berlin Biennale, Sharjah Biennial, Antenna Space Shanghai, M+ Museum Hong Kong, Hiroshima MOCA, Berlinale Film Festival, South by Southwest Film Festival, Gropius Bau Berlin, Lafayette Anticipation Paris


Awards

2016 Guggenheim Fellow

2018 MacArthur Genius Grant, lifetime achievement

2018 Hugo Boss Prize Nominee


Stipendium

Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

Stipendium Rockefeller Foundation

Past events

  1. 2024

    music theatre |Koninklijk Theater Carré
  2. 2022

    multidisciplinary |Muziekgebouw - Grote zaal