Tseng Kwong Chi

Tseng Kwong Chi ( Chinese  曾 廣智  /  曾 广智 , Pinyin Céng Guǎngzhì , Jyutping Zang ¹ Gwong ² zi ³ , * 1950 in Hong Kong ; † March 10, 1990 in New York ) was an American photographer of Chinese origin.

Life

Tseng Kwong Chi's father served in the nationalist army in the Chinese civil war against the communist revolutionaries and therefore had to flee China after the regime change . As a teenager, Tseng Kwong-Chi immigrated to Canada and moved to New York in 1978 .

When he walked into a posh New York restaurant in a Mao suit in 1979 , he was taken for granted as a Chinese dignitary. The next year he had himself photographed as a communist envoy at the opening of a Qing Dynasty exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with the New York art scene's crowd. This "ubiquitous ignorance of Western people towards Asia in general and China in particular" inspired his later work as a photographer. He posed in the said suit with black, mirrored sunglasses and a forged ID card on his chest in front of the most famous American sights. His strict military stance deliberately gives the pictures an ironic, humorous note.

Tseng was also responsible for the recordings of Keith Haring's ephemeral "street work". The two met in the spring of 1979 in New York. Haring was enthusiastic about his series "Slut for Art", which showed men in stripper outfits, and invited him to Club 57, which was popular with young artists at the time .

Tseng Kwong Chi died on March 10, 1990 at the age of only 39, like his good friend Keith Haring less than a month earlier, as a result of an infection with the HI virus .

Web links

• "Colorful ants on the rainbow" - with a section about Tseng Kwong-Chi's work (PDF file; 290 kB)
• Some pictures of Tseng Kwong Chi - blog.wenxuecity.com (chinese)
• Tseng Kwong-Chi - hanart.com

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Chinese. Tseng is the family name here, Kwong Chi is the first name.