The exhibition Nude Jade by Hansel Tai takes on the sacred material: jade. Celebrated as the ultimate symbol of perfection and purity and valued for its translucent, skin like glow, jade is often carved into intricate mythological and religious forms.
The focus of Hansel Tai research is the LGBTQ+ culture among young Pan-Asians on a global scale. And he does it by questioning traditional symbols. Tai pendants, formally reduced and abstracted, are penetrated with heavy ready-made circular barbell piercings. With this gesture – which is inconceivable, on many levels, to those familiar with traditional jade carving – Tai subdues the sacred jade, aiming to evoke a strong emotional response from the viewer.
In this body of work Tai translates and subverts the traditional symbolism, through a transgressive and alienating action, puncturing the stone with piercing, in an almost impossible act.
This is the first exhibition for Hansel Tai in A-Gallery and he is presenting his iconic work on Jade. His upbringing and education in China, and his later exposure to the work methods of the Estonian Academy of Arts, with its very pronounced aesthetic, barely left a mark on him. For this solo exhibition, he takes the best of both worlds, and with precision and determination he produces work in which materials and techniques are the means to a very specific end.
Hansel Tai is a Chinese artist and designer working and residing in Estonia. Tai’s work focuses on the Post-internet Epoch, in which naturalness is shadowed by the body cult, deformation, subcultural signs and high gloss metal, and digital voodoo is materialized into fetish objects. He graduated in 2016 from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, where he studied Art Jewellery. He has continued his artistic research at the Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn as well as the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. In 2019 he obtained a Master of Arts degree. He has exhibited in the Netherlands, Germany, France and the USA among other countries.
