Sami Tsang: Selected works, 2022-2026
My work explores cultural inheritance, migration, memory, and selfhood through ceramic sculpture and mixed media. Drawing from my family’s history of displacement and my experience growing up between Chinese and Western cultures, I create hybrid figures that navigate resilience, transformation, and the complexities of inherited experience.
Many of my works begin with family stories, childhood memories, and Chinese proverbs that shaped my understanding of the world. These references become a framework for examining intergenerational relationships, cultural expectations, and the ways survival is carried across generations. I am particularly interested in how adaptation, sacrifice, and resilience become embedded within family narratives and continue to influence how we see ourselves and one another.
Working primarily with clay, I approach making as an intuitive and reflective process. Forms emerge through gradual additions, revisions, and negotiations with the material. Ceramics allows me to translate intangible experiences into physical form, giving shape to emotions, memories, and conversations that are often difficult to articulate.
My sculptures often occupy a space between vulnerability and strength, humour and discomfort, tradition and transformation. Through hybrid characters and symbolic forms, I explore the tensions between individual agency and inherited expectations, examining how personal voice emerges from within larger cultural and familial structures.
Recently, recurring motifs such as hybrid animals and symbolic creatures have emerged in my practice as a way of exploring memory, endurance, adaptation, and intergenerational resilience. Ultimately, my work is an ongoing attempt to understand what is carried forward and what can be transformed. By giving form to memory, resilience, and lived experience, I create sculptures that hold the tensions between survival and selfhood, tradition and change.
Captions
- Edges of Her Worlds, 2026, Stoneware, glaze, underglaze, resin, fabric, thread, 22 x 10 x 9 inches, Courtesy of Sami Tsang and Cooper Cole, Toronto.
- Steady As Mount Tai, 2025, Stoneware, glaze, underglaze, fabric, beads, faux fur, 60 x 30 x 32 inches, Courtesy of Sami Tsang and Claire Oliver Gallery, New York.
- Bad Girl, Good Ancestor, 2026, Stoneware, glaze, underglaze, 22.5 x 15 x 15 inches, Courtesy of Sami Tsang and Cooper Cole, Toronto.
- What Is Passed Down, 2026, Stoneware, glaze, underglaze, thread, pyrite, resin, 14.5 x 10 x 10, Courtesy of Sami Tsang and Cooper Cole, Toronto.
- Between Us; Through Her, 2026, Stoneware, glaze, underglaze, thread, pyrite, resin, 17 x 12 x 12 inches, Courtesy of Sami Tsang and Cooper Cole, Toronto.
- Bloodless Wounds From Poisonous Roots, 2024, Stoneware, color slip, glaze, clay epoxy, acrylic, faux fur, 75 x 32 x 32 inches, Courtesy of Sami Tsang and Cooper Cole, Toronto.
- Say Your Sorrys, 2022, Stoneware, engobe, glaze, ricepaper, resin, chain, clay epoxy, 38 x 26 x 19 in, Courtesy of Sami Tsang and Cooper Cole, Toronto.
- My Secret Attempt, 2022, Stoneware, engobe, glaze, chain, resin, clay epoxy, 39 x 34 x 18 in, Courtesy of Sami Tsang and Cooper Cole, Toronto.
- Me But Not Anymore, 2022, Stoneware, engobe, glaze, 40 x 28 x 22 in, Courtesy of Sami Tsang and Cooper Cole, Toronto.
- Staying Put Is Moving Forward, 2022, Stoneware, engobe, glaze, pencil, 36 X 26 X 17 inches, Courtesy of Sami Tsang and Cooper Cole, Toronto.
- Serpent’s Love Poison, 2025, Stoneware, underglaze, glaze, glass, mica, 14.5 x 10 x 8.5 inches, Courtesy of Sami Tsang and Claire Oliver Gallery, New York.
- Wasn’t As Cathartic As I Thought It’d Be, 2024, Ceramic, glaze, engobe, resin, crystal, transparent gems, thread, acrylic, fabric, metal, chain, and epoxy, 38 1⁄2 x 38 x 29 inches, Courtesy of Sami Tsang and Cooper Cole, Toronto.
