SAMI TSANG
Sami Tsang (b. 1997, Windsor, Ontario, Canada) is a Toronto-based ceramic and mixed-media artist whose practice explores cultural inheritance, migration, memory, and selfhood through hybrid figurative sculpture and mixed media.
Tsang studied traditional Chinese painting for seven years in Hong Kong, a foundation that continues to inform her visual language and material approach. She earned a BA in Craft & Design from Sheridan College (2019) and an MFA in Ceramics from Alfred University (2021). From 2021 to 2025, she was an Artist-in-Residence in Ceramics at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto and participated in the 7th International Artist Retreat and Residency in Anhui, China, in 2024.
Her practice has been presented in solo and group exhibitions across Canada, the United States, and China, including Cooper Cole Gallery (Toronto), Claire Oliver Gallery (New York), AYE Gallery (Beijing), The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Gardiner Museum, Sculpture Space NYC, Art Toronto, Plural (Montreal), NADA Miami, and EXPO Chicago. Tsang is the recipient of the 25th Annual Winifred Shantz Award for Ceramics, and her work is held in the collections of the Gardiner Museum, the Alfred Ceramic Art Museum, the Canadian Clay & Glass Collection, the North Dakota Museum of Art, Collection Majudia, and numerous private collections.
She currently works from her independent studio in Toronto.
Artist Statement
My work explores cultural inheritance, migration, memory, and selfhood through ceramic sculpture and mixed media. Drawing from my family’s history of displacement and my experience growing up between Chinese and Western cultures, I create hybrid figures that navigate resilience, transformation, and the complexities of inherited experience.
Many of my works begin with family stories, childhood memories, and Chinese proverbs that shaped my understanding of the world. These references become a framework for examining intergenerational relationships, cultural expectations, and the ways survival is carried across generations. I am particularly interested in how adaptation, sacrifice, and resilience become embedded within family narratives and continue to influence how we see ourselves and one another.
Working primarily with clay, I approach making as an intuitive and reflective process. Forms emerge through gradual additions, revisions, and negotiations with the material. Ceramics allows me to translate intangible experiences into physical form, giving shape to emotions, memories, and conversations that are often difficult to articulate.
My sculptures often occupy a space between vulnerability and strength, humour and discomfort, tradition and transformation. Through hybrid characters and symbolic forms, I explore the tensions between individual agency and inherited expectations, examining how personal voice emerges from within larger cultural and familial structures.
Ultimately, my work is an ongoing attempt to understand what is carried forward and what can be transformed. By giving form to memory, resilience, and lived experience, I create sculptures that hold the tensions between survival and selfhood, tradition and change.