Everyday over the next few weeks, we will be highlighting the shortlisted artists for The 2022 Sovereign Asian Art Prize – the 18th edition of Asia’s most prestigious prize for contemporary artists. Selected from over 400 entries, the finalists hail from 16 countries and regions across Asia-Pacific. Of the artists, 27 are new to The Prize – appearing in our shortlist for the first time. Read on to discover more about our finalists, their key points of inspiration, and why it is important to champion the work of artists from Asia-Pacific.  

Cyrus Tang (Australia) was shortlisted for her work Carriage, inspired by deserted city life. The vessels of public transport, once bustling with people, now stand empty. 

What drew you to create an artwork featuring public transport?

The carriage of a subway, train or tram is regarded as a “non place” – coined by the French anthropologist Marc Auge. The paradox of non-places, according to Augé, is that anyone can feel ‘at home’ in them regardless of their actual background because they are equally alienating to everyone. I grew up in HK where I took subway everyday to school. After I moved to Australia, I still enjoy taking public transport. It helped me to link back to my home town. I travel quite a lot in the past 20 years, no matter its a tram or train,  most of the carriages have some similarities.

I think to take the carriage as my motive of photograph was to express my personal feeling towards Covid, as it is an non place where most people in the city will associate with to certain extent. The emptiness inside the carriage creates an eerie feeling for me, it is a unique and unusual image during the lock down time in Melbourne, or most other cities.

In your body of work, there seems to often be a clear focal point in the centre – what is the relevance of this?

To create the photograph, I start to focus on a certain subject that appears to me. It is unique and it helps to tell a story. When I observed the carriage, their seating arrangements may not be the same, but interestingly, they all have a pole in the middle for the passages to hold on to. I used to hold on to the pole whenever I was in the carriage during my travel.

I felt secure, like something I can rely on or to anchor myself into this place. The carriage to me is a transitional space, but we still want to have something to hold on to until to move to our next journey. We are living in a world where people are constantly due to different reasons: migration or war. At certain point, we are constantly in a transitional space , we need to hold on to certain thing to anchor ourselves.

You were a finalist last year, congratulations on being shortlisted again! How has the past year been for you?

It is my honour to be a finalist twice. My new body of work receiving positive feedback was an encouraging experience for me. Melbourne experienced a severe lock down: the longest lockdown in the world (total 262 days). I started this project during the Melbourne lockdowns that started in 2020, during which I was unable to access my studio. But this provided me with the opportunity to focus on photography for over 2 years. I found myself observing the Australian landscape from an immigrant’s or stranger’s perspective.

I was particularly interested in subtle changes within particular places that I would return to repeatedly over this period, changes that became evident when photographing scenes with similar compositions or motifs. I then built up the images in layers as I tried to register their points of coincidence as if these were anchors in my memory. Every single image then became submerged in reverberations and vibrations of memory. I was recording time going by in the lockdowns—passing me by—as these changes accumulated with the repetitions, like echoes.  I think of this kind of repetition as contemplation, as a way to increase the awareness of being.  

How important is it to support artists from Asia-Pacific?

In the past decades, European art has been the centre of the contemporary art scene. However, I personal think the art in Asia-Pacific is more engaging and interesting to me. It is because it has the interchange of the Eastern and Western culture (due to Western colonisation back in the 17 and 18th centuries). As an Asian woman artist, I feel our work has always been underestimated compared to others. At least this is how I feel in Melbourne. It is important to support artists from Asia-Pacific to make the our art industry more cultural inclusive.

To vote for Tang’s work, click here. The most popular finalist will receive the Public Vote Prize and USD1000.

To register interest in purchasing Tang’s artwork, click here. Artwork sales will be launched in person and online during Art Central, from 26 – 29 May 2022. Proceeds will be spilt equally between the artist and our charitable programmes.

Want to learn about our other finalists? Tune in tomorrow for our next interview. To read previous artists’ interviews, click here.