DIRK TSAI (b. 1994, Taipei) interrogates queer materiality and the fluidity of identity through an
artistic practice that explores how the body—when subjected to institutional discipline—
navigates, dismantles, and reassembles itself to manifest an unstable state of perception. His
work examines how bodily states move, pause, and locate themselves through constant,
visceral interaction with their surroundings.
Drawing upon Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology, Tsai conceptualizes his creative process
as a trajectory of bodily orientation, displacement, and alignment. Tsai translates these somatic
transitions through the anatomical materiality of painting: canvas as skin, stretcher bars as
skeleton, and pigment as blood, unified into a fluid soul. Through processes of assemblage,
dislocation, and extension, his forms emerge, rupturing fixed perspectives. These configurations
bear the sedimented layers of past and present experiences, re-enacting the formation of
direction and the construction of meaning through difference, while deliberately remaining in a
vulnerable, unfinished state.
Tsai's practice navigates the liminal spaces between painting, sculpture, and conceptual
installation. He holds an MA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Arts, University of the Arts

London (2023). He was honoured as a Made In Taiwan (MIT) Emerging Artist Awardee by the
Ministry of Culture, Taiwan (2024), and was recently longlisted for the prestigious Aesthetica Art
Prize in the United Kingdom (2026). The Chelsea Arts Club Trust has supported his research-
driven approach to material infrastructure and temporal flux through the MA Materials and
Research Award (2022)