Sami Tsang: Know Your Place
CURATOR: Suzanne Carte
What does it mean to know your place? Having grown up in a family with clearly defined gender and birth order roles, Sami Tsang utilizes the power of clay to push back against the foundational social systems that inform those positions and structures. Her paintings and sculptural forms become conductors for conversation, processing, and reflections that destabilize the roles within the complex, prescribed family hierarchy. The works unfurl narratives of personal trauma, and the painful negotiation of building new relationships.
Artist Statement:
“Growing up as the youngest child of a conservative Hong Kong family, my voice was not welcomed. The ability to speak soon faded away. I moved back to Canada at age 12, where the constant flux amidst Chinese and Western cultures created a series of traumatic issues. At 20, I began to resist my traditional role.
Every day, I process my progress.
I gather stories of domestic encounters and private narratives. I find relationships between these stories and the materials I use in my practice, such as clay, resin, rice paper and ball point pen. Is clay actually the old grump? Does making humorous sculpture help me to strip down guilt? Can using ball point pen bring back innocence? Chinese culture forbids speaking of family shame. My ultimate goal is to face head-on this heavy-hearted matter. When my heart allows, I convert these stories through the work of cartoonist-like gesture into bearable, yet straightforward imagery to reveal the raw emotional experiences we share. Over time, I hope the sweet anticipation for mooncake parties will become fruitful.”
Meet the artists
Sami Tsang
Sami Tsang is a Toronto-based ceramic artist whose work explores domestic encounters and private narratives borne out of the flux amidst two cultures – Chinese and Western. Sami studied traditional Chinese painting for seven years in Hong Kong, which had a profound effect on her pursuing an arts career. Returning to Canada, Sami first studied ceramics at H.B. Secondary School in London, ON, renowned for its arts program, then earned her BA Craft & Design from Sheridan College (2019) and her MFA in Ceramics from Alfred University, NY (2021). Sami has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions in the United States and Canada, including the ClayAkar Gallery, Iowa City, IA, the Gardiner Museum and Cooper Cole Gallery, Toronto, ON.