Wu Tsang, filmmaker, artist, and performer born in 1982, has built a body of work that explores central themes such as identity, marginalization, and representation. Educated at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (B.F.A., 2004) and the University of California in Los Angeles (M.F.A., 2010), Tsang utilizes the hybrid between documentary and fiction to amplify the voices of queer, Black, and Brown communities often silenced by hegemonic discourses.
The concept of “in-betweenness,” recurrent in her work, recalls Homi Bhabha’s ideas, where identity forms in the overlap of cultures and experiences. Tsang critically aligns with this perspective, creating narratives that refuse fixed and binary categorizations. Her work, in collaboration with artists like Tosh Basco, Fred Moten, and Kelsey Lu, reflects experimental and performative processes that challenge traditional narrative structures.
Tsang’s practice can be critically analyzed through the lens of digital colonialism, a concept describing how digital technologies perpetuate power dynamics similar to colonialism, often appropriating marginalized cultures for mainstream consumption. The film Wildness (2012), for example, documents the Silver Platter, an LGBTQIA+ immigrant bar in Los Angeles, which, after becoming a stage for performances organized by Tsang and other queer artists of color, experienced tensions between its original community and new artistic presences. This phenomenon mirrors the dynamics of digital colonialism, where spaces and cultural expressions of marginalized groups are co-opted and reconfigured by power structures.
The installation Of Whales (2022), inspired by Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, also offers a post-colonial reading by reimagining the story from the whale’s perspective and a fluid crew in terms of gender and race. Using extended reality (XR) technologies, Tsang creates an immersive space that challenges Eurocentric and anthropocentric views, questioning power hierarchies in historical and contemporary narratives.
In the digital context, Tsang’s concerns with voice and representation resonate strongly. The short film Shape of a Right Statement (2008) addresses communication mediated by technology, questioning who has access to expression and how that expression is perceived. In an environment where algorithms control visibility and digital platforms often marginalize dissenting voices, Tsang’s work becomes an act of resistance and a critical study of digital colonialism.
Wu Tsang, therefore, portrays marginalized narratives while exposing and criticizing how digital colonialism perpetuates exclusion and appropriation. Her work invites reflection on how digital arts can both resist and reproduce colonial dynamics, offering a fruitful field for studies on digital colonialism and artificial intelligence in contemporary art.