Wu Tsang

Wu Tsang is an award­winning filmmaker and performance artist. Her works explore hidden histories, marginalized narratives, and the act of performing itself. Her documentary approach combines different types of storytelling with fantastical excursions into imaginary realms. Tsang’s first feature film Wildness (2012) documents an immigrant gay bar in MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, where she co­organized a weekly club for the bar’s longtime patrons and young queer artists of colour. The bar itself plays a leading role in the film, serving as an omniscient narrator and embodying the real and fantastical acts through which cultural fictions are formed and expressed. Her practice is deeply collaborative, most frequently associated with the performance group she co-founded in 2016 with artist Tosh Basco, known as Moved by the Motion. Moved by the Motion is a “roving band” of interdisciplinary artists, including experimental cellist Patrick Belaga, dancer Josh Johnson, electronic musician Asma Maroof, and poet Fred Moten. Some of her long­term collaborators moved to Zurich with Tsang joining the Schauspielhaus ensemble and share her time in residence here: Tosh Basco (fka boychild), Asma Maroof and Josh Johnson. She has been awarded various grants and currently holds a prestigious lifetime­achievement award, the 2018 MacArthur “Genius” Grant.

* 1982 in Worcester, Massachusetts

IMPORTANT WORKS: Wildness, Duilian, Gravitational Feel, Sudden Rise, A day in the life of Bliss

IMPORTANT INVITATIONS: La Biennale de Venezia, MoMa New York, Whitney Biennial, New Museum Triennial, Hammer Museum, Performa 11 New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum New York, Tate Modern London, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Berlin Biennale, Sharjah Biennial, Antenna Space Shanghai, M+ Museum Hong Kong, Hiroshima MOCA, Berlinale Film Festival, South by Southwest Film Festival, Gropius Bau Berlin, Lafayette Anticipation Paris

AWARDS: MacArthur Fellowships (2018), Guggenheim Fellow (2016), Hugo Boss Prize Nominee (2018), Stipendium Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Stipendium Rockefeller Foundation

IN THE REPERTOIRE OF SCHAUSPIELHAUS ZÜRICH

2019/20 IN ZÜRICH: Sudden RiseComposition IComposition IIComposition (vor) IVThe show’s over

2020/21 IN ZÜRICH: The show’s over

2021/22 IN ZÜRICH: Orpheus, Moby Dick

2022/23 IN ZÜRICH: Pinocchio

2023/24 IN ZÜRICH: Der Sturm, Carmen