Hide and Seek
Using poetry and intuition as a creative guide, artist Shui Tsang carves, stretches, and sews leather into eclectic works of art.
Shui Tsang can still see it in his mind’s eye, the hundreds of leather pieces stacked high in a pile almost as tall as he was.
Working as a patternmaker for a fashion design studio in Toronto, Tsang was familiar with leather as a fabric. But viewing the heap of material before him — lifeless, reeking of chemicals, waiting to be made into handbags or jackets or pants — Tsang was struck by the notion that leather served as the perfect blank vessel for creation. What once contained life was now being repurposed for mundane uses or otherwise discarded.
“If we treat leather as just a substance to make clothes or bags, then that’s all leather will be,” Tsang says. “I always felt like there could be more.”
Today, Shui Tsang has carved a unique niche for himself as an artist by literally carving (and dyeing and stretching and sewing) leather into original works using philosophy and poetry as his guide. For Tsang, leather is a medium not unlike paper. It can be folded and manipulated to express ideas and emotions, and record history.
For instance, Tsang uses leather to create business-card sized sculptures of animals, such as rabbits, whales and bats, which evolve over time based on interaction. These “playthings” are designed to be handled and can change color with neglect, prompting reflections on care and attention.
Tsang’s other series include floral arrangements that combine real flowers with leather elements to explore the fragility of living things and the transient nature of existence. Meanwhile a recent sculptural installation featured suspended leather “traps” that ensnared visitors and broached the dual nature of traps as necessary tools of harm versus the necessity to provide for oneself and others.
“There can be love in traps,” says Tsang. “We use them to feed people or make materials. To see these objects as only tools for cruelty is wrong.”
From lampshades to animal-inspired ”playthings,” Tsang’s leather creations take many forms.
Originally from Thailand, Tsang attended college in Canada and initially pursued a degree in advertising. One day, his professor suggested that lying was sometimes necessary to
sell a product. Tsang disagreed with the ethical implications that deception or embellishment was necessary. If something was genuinely good, Tsang argued, it should speak for itself.
Disillusioned, Tsang left school in favor of studying design at a technical college. He found a job at a fashion design studio that held trunk shows twice a year. Although working with leather spoke to him creatively, the work became unfulfilling.
“Seeing that pile of leather stacking up... I didn’t want to see the leather as a life wasted. It could become something meaningful that reflects its potential,” says Tsang. “I became an artist because you can have total control of how you create something, the material you choose, and the message behind your work.”
For Tsang, this message often includes narrative. His process involves writing poetry — first in Thai, then translated into English, then back and forth between the two languages. The words evolve and change with each iteration, revealing new perspectives and possible meanings. For example, “อย่า รอด รัก / ให้ สาม เหย่ือ / ได้ เผ่ือ ถึง” can be translated as “do not let survive love / for three prey / to spare to.”
After several translations (and some edits), a clearer stanza begins to emerge: “Please, no more love. Leave nothing spared for us three ensnared.” Visiting Tsang's studio across from the Hawai‘i Theatre in Chinatown, guests are sometimes invited to read these poems as they explore his space and interact with his work.
Tsang and his wife, a geophysics researcher, moved to the Islands a decade ago. The tropical climate and a strong connection with nature often reminds Tsang of his childhood growing up in Thailand. He sees many parallels between Hawai‘i and Thailand, particularly when it comes to issues of cultural identity and belonging. For Tsang, both places grapple with a sense of displacement. Both places are not quite home.
“When I was working on my flower art series, I learned that many of the orchids you see at the airport or in hotels that you think come from Hawai‘i are actually frozen and shipped in from Thailand,” Tsang says. “Sometimes I feel like I am far from home. But I think I have finally set down roots.”
Earlier this year, an art exhibition Sūt-Saeng (“End of the light”) invited guests to contemplate the dual nature of traps as objects of hunting versus love.