[insert]: Pei-Yi Tsai

SLQS Gallery is pleased to present [insert], a solo exhibition by London-based artist Pei-Yi Tsai (b. Taipei, Taiwan) curated by Senem Cagla Bilgin-Keys. Tsai’s work navigates the subtle intersections of visibility, embodied presence, and interiority by tracing the tensions of social expectation, belonging, and queer identity.

Pei-Yi Tsai’s paintings explore the delicate threshold between visibility, somatic presence and identity. Her figures are often partial: faces cropped, gestures suspended, bodies dissolving into shadow. Rather than offering legible, traditional portraits, her works unsettle the conventional promise of representation. Tsai approaches representation not as affirmation but as a structure that can carry the fluidity of identity through colour, gestural expression, and memory. The works create moments in which identity emerges only fragmentarily, revealing how individuals navigate the pressures of social expectation, belonging, queer subjectivity and highlighting the provisional, contingent nature of being seen.

Materially, the works reinforce this sense of provisionality. Working with textile substrates, Tsai mobilises the surface as a site of resistance and inscription. Soft transitions between figure and ground, subtle traces of erasure, and painterly hesitation evoke time and repeated engagement.

[insert] aims to foreground the identity something in flux, emerging, dissolving, overlapping with memory, geography, culture and resisting closure. Her fragmented surfaces suggest that identity is performed, rehearsed, and enacted over time rather than fully present all at once or externally imposed.

This exhibition is curated by Senem Cagla Bilgin-Keys.