Lauren Tsai On Keeping Ideas Alive in a Dying World

“The Dying World World” was a liminal space where forgotten ideas live on in the iconic Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Photographed by Joshua White. Courtesy of artist.

When I visited “The Dying World”—Lauren Tsai’s installation along the periphery of Hollywood Forever Cemetery—I was struck by how Victorian it was. The yellow clapboard house appeared as morbid and anachronistic as any other mausoleum, anchored in a front yard brimming with mid-century detritus—rust-eaten bicycles, jettisoned turbines, mottled teddy bears, sun-bleached spring horses. A waifish, Burtonesque character—pale, with black hair, wide eyes and palpable anhedonia—lives in this house. She gazes out the window with a vacant expression, a bottle of ink in her hand. As she presses her palm to the windowpane, condensation fogs the glass. Her name is Astrid, and she has been haunting Tsai for a lifetime, an apparition or an idea lingering just this side of the spectral plane. Taken as such, “The Dying World” is a séance.

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At the opening reception in November, a queue of influencers and celebrities—some of whom dressed in novelty wedding gowns fitted with tulle veils—posed merrily in front of the marquee that read, “THE DYING WORLD.” When I visited two weeks later, the exhibition’s traction had not waned, and indeed had extended into long, winding lines. This was not unexpected, as Tsai, who has more than a million followers on Instagram, has established herself as a figure in the international entertainment world. From being one of the most beloved characters on the Japanese reality show Terrace House: Aloha State to starring in FX’s Legion and Netflix’s Moxie! to making her directorial debut animating the “Cool About It” music video for Grammy Award-winning indie band, boygenius, the artist’s star is blinding, and she has the fanbase to prove it.

Tsai’s appeal comes as much from her beauty as her artistic tenor—her precocious sophistication, her mystic interiority. Over the past few years, she has embarked on a campaign to break into the international art and animation world with a distinct genre of pop Surrealism. Among her inspirations, she named Alice (1988),

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