Keith Haring, Muna Tseng, and Tseng Kwong Chi: Boundless Minds & Moving Bodies in 80’s New York

More than a book. An archive. A memoir. An in-your-face Catalogue of three dynamic artists in the explosive and institution-defying downtown early 80s art scene in New York City: Keith Haring, Tseng Kwong Chi and Muna Tseng. It’s a love poem celebrating the intertwining lives of these three at a transformative moment of art-making. An initiative of SCHUNK, Heerlen, The Netherlands, this is a profound collection of the art, personal photographs, drawings, and enlightening essaysabout these three artists who discovered and nurtured each other in a remarkable historical moment when art hit the streets, when it spoke to a young urban generation, when it electrified us with its cheeky brilliance. And reminds us of the tragedy of its too short life.Bold images remind us of Haring’s propulsive performance art as he drew what would become a new language—iconic characters and symbols— over subway walls, ad spaces, billboards and sidewalks. That performance art would have disappeared if Keith hadn’t met Tseng Kwong Chi, who became a close friend and collaborator, traveling the world with Haring documenting his work while creating his own conceptual performance art photographs. East Meets West was his prolific, large scale and provocative creation of self-portraits, always in his Mao suit and mirrored glasses in front of architectural and natural landscapes icons around the globe. The book includes some of that stunning work. Then came the cataclysmic effects of a raging pandemic. In 1990 both Haring and Tseng Kwong Chi died.Kwong Chi’s work would have languished without his sister Muna’s dedication to promote and preserve his legacy. Muna, trained in classical modern dance founded her own company, Muna Tseng Dance Projects, and began creating exploratory pieces with little funding and nurtured by the fabulous Queer club scene that provided an exciting cast of talents to tap. She collaborated with Haring on one of her first independent dance projects. And here we see the drawings of her & Haring’s creative process and photo documents by her brother of the work. It was an energetic world of cross-fertilization. Through this collection, Muna Tseng is finally recognized for the colossal effort of preserving her brother’s legacy. “What survives?” asks essayist, Bill T Jones. “Relationships, memories and love of art.”

We have been seeing a lot of books and documentaries recently about the 80s in downtown New York City. They often recycle names, thoughts, and images, we have seen many times before. Muna Tseng's "Boundless Minds & Moving Bodies in 80s New York" is different. It's fresh, original, and an invaluable time capsule. Having collaborated with two of the most brilliant artists of the period, Keith Haring and her photographer brother Tseng Kwong Chi, she is able to bring us intimately into the spirit and reality of this seminal moment. As do the writers contributing essays to the work, including Bill T Jones and Carlo McCormick. We see many photographs by Tseng Kwong Chi that have rarely been seen. The archival documenting of the dance piece Muna Tseng did with Keith Haring is likewise rare and eye-opening. "Boundless Minds" is an essential book.

I received my copy and I am so pleased with thisbook. I first spent a long time looking at all theamazing photographs from cover to cover. These arebeautiful to look at and such importantdocumentation from Keith Haring's oeuvre, as wellas Muna Tseng and Tseng Kwong Chi's underrepresented works from the period. The nextmorning I spent it reading all the writerscontributions and was so impressed I couldn't stopuntil I read everything in one go. This book is atestament to the important contribution to the worldof 1980's dance, photography and painting incollaboration by these three amazing artists. Thedesign and printing quality of the book is absolutelyflawless and does justice to its subject.