In Conversation with Jocelyn Tsaih for 'Janua'

Ahead of her exhibition at THE BLANC in collaboration with Uprise Art, we catch up with Jocelyn Tsaih in her Greenpoint studio and talk about her residencies in Mexico City and Oaxaca, modularity, identity, and missing out on color theory classes. Read the full transcription of our conversation below and watch the video here.

Uprise Art: Who are you?

Jocelyn Tsaih: My name is Jocelyn, and I'm a painter, muralist, and illustrator.

UA: Where are you from and where do you currently live and work?

JT: I'm originally from Taipei, Taiwan. I grew up in Shanghai, and I currently live and work in Brooklyn, New York.

UA: When did you start developing this work?

JT: I've been painting and doing ceramics for the past seven years since I became freelance. This newer work was developed last summer when I was at a residency in Mexico City. It's kind of a departure from the works that I had been making before, although still exploring similar themes to the work that I've always been making.

UA: How would you describe the works that you were making before?

JT: The works that I was making before were a lot more figurative, and I think more illustrative. This work is still illustrative in a lot of ways; there has always been a central figure that I work with, and it's present in a lot of the previous works, but in the newer works, it's become a little bit more abstracted and taken on new forms.

UA: Can you say more about that figure, why you started working with it, what it represents for you, and how it's changed over the years?

JT: The figure started as a doodle that I would do in my sketchbook when I was in college for graphic design at the School of Visual Arts. It was just a fun way for me to express different things that I didn't really know how to put into words. My sketchbooks were like my visual diary in a sense. Drawing this figure felt like a really fun way to explore different emotions and things that are not so tangible.

At the time, this was when Instagram first started. I started sharing these drawings online, and obviously, starting out, it was like only my friends that were following me, but they would talk to me about the drawings, and I started realizing that the figure was maybe a little bit more universal than I first thought. Because I was drawing it as a way to express things that were specific to myself, I didn't really think that other people would understand it; I assumed the figure was too ambiguous and obscure. It was really a gratifying experience to realize that it was something that people could resonate with. Then I just started drawing it more, and also because it's such an amorphous form, I felt like it could be stretched and fluid and flexible, so I just started exploring other ways of illustrating and drawing the figure, and it stuck as something that I could keep exploring and experimenting with.

UA: How has the figure transformed in this most recent body of work?

JT: With drawing the figure, it's always been a vehicle or vessel for me to explore themes of identity, belonging, and connection. Recently, when I was in Mexico City for a residency, I felt like I was noticing architectural details that were saying similar things to me. With the newer works, I kind of abstracted the figures more and turned them into forms that look like iron gates or windows. So the figure is now an open form that you can see through rather than a solid form that takes up most of the composition.

UA: Beyond the figure, how did you begin working in this style and with these materials? I know the ceramics are a little bit newer to your practice.

JT: Yeah, I've been doing ceramics for a few years now. That came a little bit later after I started painting more consistently. But the ceramics came about when I did a residency in Oaxaca. I got to work with clay there, and that was my first time doing hand-building. We didn't have access to formal equipment, so we would just hand-build ceramic sculptures on our own, and I thought that was such a fun process and really grounding. Afterwards, I started taking a hand-building class in Oakland (at the time I was living in California), and I just fell in love with the medium and the possibility of being able to build anything with clay. I've been continuing to make ceramics, and I think it's a really fun way to make a sculptural form and add a three-dimensional layer to my work because my painting style is a little bit more like flat and graphic. I think adding an actual dimensional component to the pieces and combining the painting with ceramics or other materials like wood is like my way of adding depth and dimensionality.

UA: Do you often work on the ceramics at the same time that you're working on the paintings, or do you have different times that you work on each in the studio?

JT: It depends. I definitely flip back and forth a lot because I tend to get bored with one medium and then want to work on something else, which is why I like to do a lot of different things. I do find it interesting when I'm working on them simultaneously because I feel like it creates a conversation between the two materials, and then I start to see that I'm using similar motifs in the ceramic work and the painting work, so everything becomes a little bit more cohesive.

UA: Would you say that you find it easier to communicate different ideas in one medium over another, or is it more of a fluid choice based on what you’re trying to express?

JT: I think it's a pretty fluid choice, but with ceramics, the possibility of making the piece somewhat functional is interesting. Not that paintings can't be functional, but I love a multifunctional object or something that is artful but also has a specific use. That's been really interesting for me to explore. I made a lamp recently, and I've also been making these ceramic frames.

UA: I feel like that idea of the “object” of the ceramic is in a way bleeding into the painting. You've started making these ceramic frames that interact with the paintings, and even this piece, Satellite Trio, I remember you saying that you want it to have different components that can be switched out, so there's something a little bit more mobile and alive about the painting beyond the two-dimensional image. There is a physicality, like with the ceramics, even though it's still maybe not a “usable object”.

JT: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. I’ve been really inspired by the idea of using this piece to think about motion and what it would look like if it had two other top pieces right next to it. I've been making those two pieces to accompany this one so that it could have more of an opening movement. With the newer works, I've been thinking about modularity and how you can swap out components or interchange them, and how the final form can be determined by the person who's collecting it, or the person who's engaging with the piece. It adds another layer to the conversation.

UA: I was going to ask you if there are any particular materials that you're really excited about at the moment, but that could also extend more abstractly into any ideas that you're excited about at the moment. Maybe it's this idea of the modularity and interactiveness?

JT: I think the interactiveness is what I'm really excited about at the moment. Being able to engage with art in an interactive way is different than how I usually work since I mostly make paintings that you just see on the wall. I think it's just like a fun element to have when you can let someone else decide what it's gonna look like in the end. Like with the ceramic frames, I have paintings on paper within the frames, but that could be swapped out for other paintings, or it could even be swapped out with photos or something else. There are different possibilities there, but I also think it speaks to this idea of identity and how it's perceived and also presented. Then, once the person who is engaging with the work is making their decision on what the final piece is going to look like, that's adding back to the idea that identity is a conversation.

UA: Yeah, there's more exchange and activation in the work that way.

Another thing I wanted to ask you about was color in your work. What relationship do you have to color? How do you use color? And then, too, with the ceramics, they're colorful, but less colorful than the paintings - but you use a lot of different finishes, whether it's that super metallic high gloss or the more raw speckled finish. Can you tell us more about those choices?

JT: Yeah, I love color, as you could probably tell from my work! It's funny because I never learned color theory. Originally, I was enrolled as an advertising student at SVA, so my first year foundation classes were different from the other graphic designers', so I accidentally missed that class. But the way I approach color is very intuitive, and I think I use color as part of the way that I send a message or communicate a feeling because colors have so much meaning in them. With the ceramics, I think I gravitate towards textures or finishes that I can't achieve in my paintings. That's why I'm really interested when it's like the bare speckled clay that's just fired, or using more of a chrome metallic finish. I think it creates a nice contrast with the colors that I use within my paintings.

UA: If you were to summarize what you make work about, how would you describe that?

JT: I would describe my work as being about different aspects of what it means to be human. The emotions we feel, the connections we have with others, and the intense, intangible, and sometimes otherworldly ways we feel.

UA: What questions or tensions feel most alive in your work right now?

JT: I'm most interested in the question of how identity is conveyed and then thus perceived and received. I'm interested in that on an individual level and also a collective level. That question came about during the residency that I did in Mexico City last year, where I started creating these newer works. I was constantly comparing my environment in Mexico to what I was familiar with, like my background in Taiwan or China or the States. It was just really interesting to me to notice all these similarities but also differences, and then also, as someone who doesn't speak very good Spanish, to collect all these nonverbal visual context clues. I would see people arranging things on their window sills or notice the types of tiles that people have used for their homes and see how they became indicators of identity and culture, whether individual or collective. That kind of just snowballed into these questions about what identity is and how we each reflect on it and express it. How does that become a conversation when other people are trying to understand it?

UA: Had you thought about the idea of cultural identity in your work before that?

JT: Yes, I think it's something that I've thought about a lot just because I grew up within multiple cultures, and I think I've always felt like I'm in limbo - like not really here or there. A lot of the earlier works are more in that realm where the figure is in a very abstracted environment or in landscapes that aren’t recognizable or familiar in any way. That was my way of depicting an in-between world that I feel that I exist in, but also kind of creating this fantasy land where I could just be and I didn't have to choose one or the other. I think this newer series of work is touching on similar things, just in a different way.

UA: Are there any artists, thinkers or cultural references that have shaped how you see your work?

JT: I’m drawn to films and filmmakers that I feel like can express a lot of the facets of life that are reflective and meditative and quieter. I try to look to these types of works when I'm creating my own work because I'm trying to capture specific feelings or concepts that I think are done really well in certain films, but it’s so different because with the work that I make, it's kind of embodied in a physical thing and there's inherently a different way of storytelling there.

UA: Yeah, things are more static.

Are there any personal or historical narratives that tend to surface in your work?

JT: I was raised in a Buddhist household, so I think that the idea of interconnectedness and compassion and empathy has always been really important to me, and it definitely comes out in my work. I don't really think I realized that it was so ingrained in me, but that's why I have been so interested in making work about how we're all connected and how we have very universal experiences. These were just like ideals and philosophies that I've learned from a young age.

UA: What directions are you excited to explore next?

JT: I think I'm just excited to keep exploring this newer series of work that I've been making with the modularity and with reference to architectural details like raw iron gates. I've been collecting a lot of images. Whenever I go on walks, I take photos of things that I find interesting or could translate really well as paintings or ceramic pieces. I just have a lot more things that I think I really want to make.

Published August 2026