Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, 1986, from the self-portrait series East Meets West, 1979–1989
This work was part of Looking 101, a 2024 exhibition that supported Northwestern University’s undergraduate curriculum with an emphasis on first-year students.The following text was made available in the exhibition via cell phone camera (QR code) and booklet
From 1979 until his premature death from AIDS in 1990, Tseng Kwong Chi made an art of performing the self, producing photographs in which he embedded his body within and amid a range of landscapes and social scenarios. In Mount Rushmore, South Dakota he stares up at the sculpted faces of former US presidents on Mount Rushmore National Memorial, clad in a Zhongshan suit (famously associated with Mao Zedong and commonly associated with Chinese communism). Eight years earlier, Tseng had attended a black-tie event, dressed in the same style of suit. His resulting treatment as a revered Chinese dignitary inspired him to begin deliberately performing this mistaken identity elsewhere as the "Ambiguous Ambassador." This work is part of a series of self- portraits titled East Meets West, 1979 –1989 in which Tseng photographed himself performing this persona in iconic locations like the Grand Canyon and the Golden Gate Bridge.
