citylikeyou — Thunder Bay / Howie Tsui

Vancouver-based artist Howie Tsui’s culturally divergent practice owes much to the shifting backdrop of his formative years spent in Hong Kong, Lagos and Thunder Bay.

http://www.howietsui.com

Visual Artist

Current city: Ottawa

Other cities: Vancouver Hong Kong Lagos Thunder Bay

howietsui.com

Vancouver-based artist Howie Tsui’s culturally divergent practice owes much to the shifting backdrop of his formative years spent in Hong Kong, Lagos and Thunder Bay.

Ottawa / Market

As a child in Hong Kong, I was always mesmerized by all the glass and mirrors and the way they created this illusion of space. My favourite were aquariums with seahorses in them. Kowloon Market in Chinatown satiates my aquaphilia with their fish tanks, while also satiating my appetite for freshly bonked fish cleaned and ready to be steamed.

Ottawa / Shop

This vintage clothing store ain’t just some new-aged, marked up warehouse for ironic t-shirts and howling wolf hoodies. Brimming to the teats with ghostly relics, Ragtime has come to my rescue on multiple occasions; whether it’s a tailcoat for a bougie gala, Genghis Khan gear for a time-travel party, a Kamikaze pilot for Halloween or knickerbockers for my groomsmen.

Ottawa / Restaurant

We have the best Vietnamese cuisine in Canada thanks to an inclusive policy that opened the city up to thousands of post-war Vietnamese refugees in the late 70s. At the zenith of this flavour heap is Huong’s where I can relive a recent trip to vibrant Hanoi. The whole idea of lining up for egg-y brunch is absurd when you can get a spicy saté noodle lashing here and squash that hangover in seconds.

Ottawa / Gallery

Artengine is a local arts group that produces technologically based presentations. As part of their Electric Fields program, I recently attended Swim Sound – a sound performance at a municipal pool. A percussionist played on a floating platform, while a knob twiddler tweaked and tweezed the inputs coming from drum mics and a couple underwater mics. Too fun with an encore performance possibly happening in the spring!

Ottawa / Bar

With age, I’ve been more reluctant to engage in the cyclical social gymnastics of a high-octane evening. Just give me a pint and a pinball machine and I’ll be a content little monk, cussing at gravity and the wiles of analog engineering. Aside from triggering rebellious teenage memories, the Orange Monkey pool hall is also situated in one of the rare industrial complexes in the city.

Milan / Art Director

In 2017 I created DotPigeon, an artistic project that uses Instagram as a platform. Inspired by pop culture, politics, icons and trends of the moment, the idea behind my artworks remains the same: to twist images in order to create simple and comprehensible messages executed in a clean and visually satisfying way. The account reaches more than 40 thousand people and my works have been published by several online magazines, Instagram pages and newspapers (Forbes, ItsNiceThat, Fubiz, Popmyeyes, UrbanContest, Freeda, Designyoutrust, Designtaxi, Cnn, Darlin Magazine, Collater.al, Il Messaggero, Trendland, Picame Mag and many others).

New York / Designer

Francisco Lopez (born 1974 in Miami, Florida) is a Creative Director, Visual Artist and Filmmaker living in Brooklyn. He graduated from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 2000. In 2004 Monica Brand and Francisco Lopez founded the multidisciplinary Creative studio “Mogollon” in New York City. Together they have created work for both art and commerce experimenting with virtually every media. Mogollon’s art films and work have been exhibited at PS1MoMA, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Diesel Art Gallery in Tokyo and The Drawing Center in New York.

Barcelona / Visual Artist

Joan Tarragó is a Barcelona based visual artist. His career started 17 years ago when he moved to Athens for a school internship. Since this time he became modern nomad of everyday life, always on the move between Barcelona, Berlin, Paris, Biarritz, NY, Richmond, Miami, Thailand, Bulgaria, Gambia, Copenhagen, etc... He is in an interdisciplinary journey between illustration and graphic design, two-and three-dimensionality. He believes illustration is no longer bound by the flat format, but very often inspects and develops space. With his projects he tries to build bridges between art and design, where illustration, graffiti, street & communication all play an important role. Joan illustrates his fantastic animal's world and characters, holy scenarios filled with symbolism and curious lines and textures. He currently lives in Barcelona and keeps spreading his world through his studio taking part in mural festivals, preparing new exhibitions and collaborating with brands and non corporate organizations.

Paris / Visual Artist

Camille Lévêque (1985) is a freelance photographer born and raised in Paris, France. She graduated from university in Paris with a degree in Fine Arts and Literature. Along those years she taught herself photography as well as the technicalities of a dark chamber. After graduating, she traveled worldwide for several years and documented her travels in black and white with analog equipment. From 2007 to 2008 she lived in Armenia, where she was commissioned by the French Embassy and the UNHCR to assemble a year-long reportage on post Karabagh war refugees situation in Armenia. Back in Paris she was then an intern for the agency Tendance Floue, and studio assistant for food industry shoots. In 2010 she started working as an Editorial Assistant for MAGNUM PHOTOS in Paris, to eventually move back to the US in 2011 in order to focus on personal projects. Her works have been featured on various publications, online and in print, and have been exhibited in the US and in Europe. She is founder and member of LIVE WILD collective and the co-founder of publishing house ORPHEUS STANDING ALONE.

Berlin / Artist

Performer, dancer, visual artist, curator and event manager. Based in Berlin.

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