Tseng Kwong Chi: Performing for the Camera

Tseng Kwong Chi was born in Hong Kong in 1950, and when he was 16, his family moved to Vancouver, Canada. He studied art in Paris before going to New York City in 1978. There, Tseng became a key figure in the East Village art scene, often wearing a sharp "Mao suit" and sunglasses. He called himself the “ambiguous ambassador” and used his camera like a stage, standing in front of famous landmarks with a serious face. This series, called East Meets West, showed him near places like Disneyland, the Brooklyn Bridge, and Notre‑Dame—mixing humor with deep questions about identity and how Asians were seen in America.

In 2015, New York University’s Grey Art Gallery organized an exhibition called Performing for the Camera witht the Chrysler Museum, displaying about 80 of Tseng’s photographs and earlier club and street images from the 1980s. The show focused on how Tseng blended performance with photography, making his persona part of the art. He was also a close friend of artist Keith Haring and took many pictures of him working on subway murals and in clubs. Sadly, Tseng died of AIDS in 1990 at age 39, but his work still speaks clearly about culture, performance, and the person behind the camera.