Tsai Yi-Ting, Star No. 1, 2026

2026

Medium

Pastel on paper

Dimensions

65.2 × 87.5 cm

Status

Open to Offers

Collect24 Art ID

C24-157677

Star No. 1 presents a cropped view of bare feet and lower legs against a deep blue ground. The figure appears partially outside the composition, with most of the body left unseen. The work is made with pastel on thick, custom-made paper. Rather than building up successive layers of pigment, Tsai Yi-Ting presses color into the paper’s surface, allowing it to absorb movement, gesture, and emotion. Traces of scratching and rubbing remain visible, emphasizing the physicality of her process. Tsai’s Star series marks a new phase in the artist’s practice. Known for works rooted in portraiture and her own life experience, Tsai here turns to shoes — or rather the feet that once wore them. The series reflects the past two years of the artist’s life, a period marked by illness, treatment, pain, and emotional intensity. Shoes hold strong symbolic meaning in Taiwanese culture. Sending shoes to someone can imply a desire for that person to go away, while wearing another person’s shoes is avoided because shoes are seen as vehicles for the soul. In Tsai’s Star series, shoes become repositories of personal and cultural memory, carrying traces of absence, departure, intimacy, and the body that once wore them. Drawing from personal experience and everyday life, Tsai approaches painting as a diaristic process through which inner states, interpersonal relationships, and shifting identities gradually emerge. Her works oscillate between tenderness and unease, combining delicate material sensitivity with raw emotional intensity. Through intricate surfaces and fluid gestures, Tsai constructs figures that appear simultaneously familiar and estranged, emphasizing the fragile intersections between memory and lived experience.