All Rise

Artist Angela Su is representing Hong Kong at the Venice Biennale, which opens this month after a pandemic induced one-year delay. She speaks to Tatler about her fascination with anime, levitation and disco balls

- Aaina Bhargava

If it wasn’t for her distinctive thick-rimmed black glasses, Angela Su would be unrecognisable: when she appears on video chat, her usual jet black, pin-straight, blunt-cut bob has been replaced by a blonde pixie cut. Forgoing her distinctive goth look, her new, still-edgy transformation is all in service of her latest film, The Magnificent Levitation Act of Lauren O (2022), set to debut at the Venice Biennale this month.

In the film, Su assumes the role of fictional character Lauren O; she posits that concocting a diverse range of characters could be a way of coping with a politically ruptured world. “Having all these alter egos is like having multiple personalities,” she says. “Each personality [could help] us survive a different extreme situation—it’s a survival mechanism.”