Working between Taiwan and London, Tsai challenges the conventions of portraiture through fragmented figures – cropped faces, suspended gestures, and bodies that dissolve into shadow. Her paintings resist fixed or legible representation, instead embracing ambiguity as a way to explore queer subjectivity, belonging, and the pressures of social expectation. In this conversation, she reflects on the role of fragmentation as both a formal strategy and a lived condition, revealing how painting can hold the fluid, contingent nature of identity in a world that often demands clarity.
"In the social context I grew up in, traditional values often imposed relatively fixed and singular expectations of what it means to be “female”—from wearing skirts, to maintaining certain hairstyles, to conforming to a recognizably “feminine” appearance. These implicit norms, to some extent, constrained how I could present myself. As such, these works function both as a form of self-expression and as a subtle form of resistance."
Interview of Pei-Yi Tsai published by Culturalee
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