cover image King of Kowloon: The Art of Tsang Tsou-choi

King of Kowloon: The Art of Tsang Tsou-choi

Edited by David Spaulding. Damiani (Artbook/DAP, dist.), $50 (225p) ISBN 978-88-6208-271-6

Tsang Tsou-chio was born on mainland China in 1921 and fled to Hong Kong in 1935, where he worked at menial jobs until his death in 2007. From the age of 35, he roamed Hong Kong, writing swaths of his family’s genealogy on walls, columns, fences, signage, and utility boxes, declaring himself the “king” of Kowloon, an area set aside when Britain gained control of Hong Kong in 1898 as a “ruler-less land,” a “high-density, autonomous, grassroots environment” populated by refugees. This striking volume, filled with photographs of Tsang’s obsessive work and provocative essays, grapples with how to document his art—much of which has now been destroyed—and understand and remember this mystifying man who “would never have labeled himself an artist” yet was “closer to art than anyone else.” The contributors detail how he was ostracized as a “filthy, smelly, crazy reprobate who for decades ran amok through the streets,” who was an “outsider artist” yet “a genuine insider of a specific social reality in a city like Hong Kong, where the real creative energy and efficient modi operandi exist and function exactly in the space beyond the officially sanctioned rules.” Contemporary art lovers will find much to savor in this insightful book. Illus. (Apr.)