Interview with Muna Tseng on Tseng Kwong Chi

In 1979, lacking an outfit that would meet the dress code of a New York restaurant where he was meeting his family for dinner, the artist Tseng Kwong Chi turned up wearing a thrifted Mao suit instead. To his surprise, the staff assumed he was actually a diplomat and treated him like a VIP. From then on, Tseng began developing his persona as an “ambiguous ambassador,” producing photographic self-portraits in his Mao suit at iconic tourist destinations, from the Grand Canyon to the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Despite his untimely death in 1990 from AIDS-related complications at the age of 39, Tseng continues to be lauded for this best-known performative photographic series, East Meets West (1979-89), which captures the friction generated by the intrusion of the Other, and by the clash of his identities both real (the artist son of exiled Chinese nationalists) and assumed (a dignitary of Communist China). At Ben Brown Fine Arts in Hong Kong, where Tseng’s images are on view, ArtAsiaPacific associate editor Ophelia Lai met the late artist’s sister and frequent collaborator, Muna Tseng, who shared her thoughts on his practice and legacy, as well as her fond memories of her brother.