Henry Tsang is a visual and media artist based on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples that is also known as Vancouver. His projects explore the spatial politics of history, language, community, food and cultural translation in relationship to place, taking the form of gallery exhibitions, pop-up street food offerings, 360 video walking tours, curated dinners, ephemeral and permanent public art, by employing video, photography, language, interactive media and convivial events.
Projects include: White Riot: The 1907 Anti-Asian Riots in Vancouver, (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2023) which explores the conditions leading up to and the impact of a demonstration and parade in Vancouver, Canada, organized by the Asiatic Exclusion League and the ensuing mob attack on the city’s Chinese Canadian and Japanese Canadian communities; Hastings Park, a series of colour photographs and an infrared projection depicting the four remaining buildings in Vancouver where over 8,000 Japanese Canadians were temporarily located and processed prior to being sent off to labour and internment camps during World War II; Tansy Point, a video installation of the site of the 1851 treaty signings by the Chinook peoples and the US government that still have not yet been ratified; 360 Riot Walk, a 360 video walking tour of the 1907 Anti-Asian Riots in Vancouver, Canada; The Maraya Project, which investigates the reappearance of Vancouver’s False Creek in Dubai as the Dubai Marina; Orange County, which explores overlapping urban and socio-political spaces in California and China; Napa North, which unearths relationships between wine, real estate and cultural translation in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley; and Welcome to the Land of Light, a public artwork along Vancouver’s False Creek that underscores Chinook Jargon, a 19th Century local trade language, and the English that replaced it.
Henry has worked with Vancouver’s Chinese Cultural Centre and artist-run centres to produce curatorial projects such as Self Not Whole: Cultural Identity and Chinese-Canadian Artists in Vancouver (1991) and Racy Sexy: Race, Culture & Sexuality (1993); and City at the End of Time: Hong Kong 1997 (1997). He is a past recipient of the VIVA Award and is an Associate Dean at Emily Carr University of Art & Design in Vancouver, Canada.