Shirley Tse Sculptures: From Stakeholders to Zero Impact

 by Patricia Frischer

One of my favorite Shirley Tse art works from the Artic Circle experience
was blocks of ice on skating blades. Tse explains that the
ice is tired of being skated on and it wants to skate away to escape.

In this live lecture by Shirley Tse as part of the UCSD Guest Lecture series (now archived so you can watch it yourself), we are shown work from 2019 to 2024. During this period, Tse is working with 1000 lathe turned  wood components with 3-D printing connector pieces shown in the Venice Biennial and in Hong Kong. But her more recent work pushes toward art made with existing materials with as little carbon footprint as possible.

The metaphor for the stakes of all sorts of different shapes and sizes is an exploration of stakeholders. In essence it is the relationship of one element/person to another. Is it unequal? Is it collaborative? Does it create conflict? Is there an opportunity for added value? The set of elements she creates can be assembled to be site specific and crawl from inside to outside and from floor to ceiling.

A variation on this type of construction was the quasi-badminton shaped sculpture. Particularly interesting was the shuttlecock which Tse actually called a shuttle pod. The ball front is rubber and the feather actually vanilla pods. This points toward her family’s history with rubber and vanilla plantations.

Tse decided it was time to teach a sustainable art class. She spoke of how greed is the major cause of the big three problems that are important to her: the unjust economy, climate change and health concerns. The wars, environmental problems and prejudice are interrelated. To solve one, you need to solve all.  One simple decision was to start to only re-use existing objects. Another was to try to cut down on storage and transport cost.

She was surprised to be accepted to an Artic Circle Residency in 2023 because her application was  Do Nothing. Climate change in this region is 6 time more evident than anywhere else. This becomes a jump start for her search of a Zero impact sculpture. Her idea was to be present, with less making and filming and more observing. She only used a cell phone to record, but brought tools to observe like sound enhancing gear. The resulting film has large segments of simple white subtitles on a black background. This again is a throwback to her early family life when she had to have subtitles on all the movies. For her having no images full fills a fantasy of not missing anything. The art becomes the narrative and not a documentary.

There were 20 artists in the residency and since she was doing nothing, she volunteered her time and equipment to any of them that wanted to take advantage.  She actually ended helping 6 of them with a yoga practice. She has such an interesting take on the breath. When we breath  in, we are not taking in air. Instead, we are creating a space and the universe puts air into that space. She expands that concept of oneness stating that the idea of each of us as a separate person is an illusion. It turns out that moving away from the notion of an individual artist and into a space of collaboration is all part of zero impact sculpture.  

She and her two children went to the Orkney Island in Scotland where the sun does not really set in the summer.  This sculpture was made while discovering her son’s need for a soccer ball. It  could be covered in some tissues her daughter was using for a project and the result was her very own Orkney moon. Once it was kicked around a bit and the tissue skin removed, it made a perfect low-tech foldable, fit in your pocket, no shipping cost sustainable sculpture to take home.

How do you charge for zero impact sculptures in a gallery setting. Shirley Tse  is lucky to work with Shoshana Wayne Gallery who agreed to price each one the same percentage of the value of her total time. In this case it was $3,300.