Howie Tsui (徐浩恩, b. Hong Kong) is an interdisciplinary artist based on unceded Coast Salish territories* (Vancouver). His practice spans ink brush painting, interactive sound sculpture, lenticular lightboxes and installation. Tsui constructs tense, fictive environments that gleefully deflate revered art forms and narrative genres, often stemming from the Chinese literati tradition. He employs a stylized form of derisive and exaggerated imagery as a way to satirize and disarm the homogenizing agendas of broadening regimes. The most notable branch of his practice involves the use of algorithmic animation sequences to raise questions around order and chaos and the potential of social harmony through self-organized societies. Tsui synthesizes diverging socio-cultural anxieties around superstition, surveillance, and the “abject other” through a wry outsider sensibility—casting light onto the contradictions of diasporic life.
Solo exhibitions: Patel Brown, Toronto (2025), Hanart TZ, Hong Kong (2024); Glenbow Museum (2023); Art Windsor-Essex (2022); Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (2021); The Power Plant, Toronto (2020); Ringling Museum of Art, US (2020); Burrard Arts Foundation, Vancouver (2020); Ottawa Art Gallery (2019); OCAT Museum, Xi’an (2018) and the Vancouver Art Gallery (2017). Select group exhibitions: Chinese Canadian Museum (2024), Macao International Art Biennale (2023); Art Gallery of New South Wales (2022); Tai Kwun Contemporary; Hong Kong (2021), Vancouver Art Gallery (2021); Asia Now, Paris (2019); Dalhousie Art Gallery, Halifax (2015); Para Site, Hong Kong (2014); the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2014); and the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco (2013). Public collections: National Gallery of Canada, Vancouver Art Gallery, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Canada Council Art Bank, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Ottawa Art Gallery, City of Ottawa, Global Affairs Canada, RBC Collection, Centre d'exposition de Baie-Saint-Paul and M+ Museum of Visual Culture. Tsui received Canada Council's Joseph Stauffer Prize (2005), longlisted for Sobey Art Award (2018) and was awarded the Hnatyshyn Foundation Mid-Career Award (2026). He holds a BFA from the University of Waterloo.
* traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples–Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations.
Artist Howie Tsui pictured with his work Retainers of Anarchy (2017), on display as part of the Outlaw exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, photo © Art Gallery of New South Wales, Felicity Jenkins
Contact:
howie.tsui(at)gmail.com
Patel Brown, Toronto
Hanart TZ, Hong Kong
Art Labor, Shanghai
With the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts