Marked by her cosmopolitan origins, between Europe and Asia, and by an attention to the sonorous dimension of the world, the practice of Su-Mei Tse involves issues such as time, memory, musicality, and language. Taking various forms – sculptures, videos, photographs, installations – her artworks always operate between different fields: between sound and image, nature and culture, mental space and sensory experience for example.

Like the black ink that flows from the Many Spoken Words fountain, the question of the appearance of meaning, or its evanescence, is at the heart of the work of Tse. The simplicity of the forms the artist produces contrasts with their evocative power, with the plurality of the readings that emanate from them. Her works often seem to crystallise, in the guise of an “image”, an impression, an emotion or a remembrance – those intense and fleeting experiences, which, as in the title of one of her artworks, constitute the “dizziness of life”. In the same way, they also explore the ability of images, objects and sounds to trigger the imagination of the viewer.

This exhibition is the result of several years of research in different geographical contexts, starting with Italy and Asia. It brings together a large body of recent works and new productions, including a major installation for the museum’s Grand Hall. New directions are apparent in her work, including contemplation, our relation to the vegetable and the mineral, the multiplicity of modes of existence, and the possibility of a sensitive relationship with the past.

The exhibition was conceived to be like a notebook: a form that brings together impressions that have occurred in everyday life – be they visual, sound, or memory related – and blends them in a subjective and intuitive way, allowing a whole network of echoes and correspondences to be deployed.

Su-Mei Tse was born in 1973 in Luxembourg. She lives and works in Luxembourg and Berlin.