Tseng Kwong Chi

Tseng Kwong Chi, East Meets West Manifesto 5/5, 1983 included in ArtNews: "The 100 Best Artworks About America". Born in Hong Kong in 1950, Tseng Kwong Chi emigrated with his family to Vancouver in 1966. In 1978, after attending art school at the Académie Julian in Paris, he moved to New York, where he inhabited the city’s legendary art and club scenes of the late 1970s and ’80s. During this time, he traveled throughout America and the world for a series of black-and-white photographic self-portraits titled East Meets West(1979–89). Partly inspired by Richard Nixon’s trip to China in 1972, the series saw the artist—wearing a style of suit made famous by Chairman Mao and sometimes a “visitor” badge—posing in front of such iconic landmarks as the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower, and Checkpoint Charlie. Describing his feelings about Nixon’s trip, Tseng said, “A real exchange was supposed to take place between the East and the West, however, the relations remained official and superficial.” In 1983, Tseng created three color pictures related to the East Meets West works, each titled East Meets West Manifesto, and all showing him positioned between the flags of China and the US, distilling his experience as someone split between the two. —Brian Boucher