Tai was born in Ningxia Province to a scholarly family in 1968 and started studying calligraphy with Hu Gongshi (1912-1997) since he was 7 years old. He graduated from the Department of Digital Media, Media Design School, Auckland, New Zealand in 2001. Although he had a successful career in media design and conservation, he decided to further his studies in painting and received a Ph.D. from the Department of Painting, Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China in 2012. He layers different gray ink tones on silk to enrich the brushwork and to give a misty atmosphere similar to the vast universe.
He has showcased his works in over 30 exhibitions globally, with notable solo exhibitions held at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2021 and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum at Peking University in Beijing in 2011. He has also participated in significant group exhibitions, including those at the Philadelphia Art Museum from 2022 to 2023 and the Brooklyn Museum in New York in 2019. Currently his work is on view at Chengdu Biennale: Pulse of Life, until Aug 23, 2026.
His paintings have been collected by major museums worldwide, including Brooklyn Museum, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; Seattle Art Museum; Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, The Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M Sackler Gallery, Washington D.C.; Arthur M Sackler Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; Arthur M Sackler Museum of Art and Archaeology, Peking University; Zhonghua Book Company, Beijing; Exhibition Gallery of Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau, Macau.
