All posts tagged: Sin Wai Kin

Sin Wai Kin 單慧乾

Published by Artomity Magazine

The Story Changing / Matrix 284 Gallery, Berkeley Art Museum / Berkeley, California / Dec 13, 2023 – Mar 10, 2024 / DeWitt Cheng / The Story Changing, the first US museum show by Sin Wai Kin, the Canadian-born, London-based performance artist turned filmmaker, consists of two videos in a small exhibit in the Matrix 284 Gallery and the adjoining hallway at California’s Berkeley Art Museum. The title evokes the postmodernist artist’s concerns with narrative and language in the formation of identity, which they consider to be fluid and culturally determined rather than innate; it is also self-determined and performative, in line with the queer-scene drag shows that fascinated Sin—a recent nominee for the Turner Prize—as a young art student in London in 2009. “I think drag is like a magnifying glass,” they say. “To make something more extreme is to look at it more closely.” The curator, Victoria Sung, interviewing Sin, adds, “Language is such a powerful tool in terms of how it constructs our worlds, but also how it can constrict our worlds.” …

Sin Wai Kin 單慧乾

Published by Brady Ng

Even if you don’t like boy bands, chances are you know the lyrics to at least one song that topped the charts, with harmonised backing vocals by four or five young men in their 20s, each with a different haircut and colour, each dressed in a distinct style: sporty, refined, street-smart, bad boy, whatever. Maybe one raps, maybe one is a crooner, and the others are just kind of there to add a few layers of audio complexity to their tracks and for visual completion. As fans, we project our expectations or desires onto them. These identities, each one a trope, are sculpted to sell records, move merch and pull millions of paying fans into arenas for concerts. As receptacles of fantastical fancy, or delusion, every member of a boy band not so much offers the emotional gratification that so many people are after, but simply functions as an imagined companion that radiates affection. This peaked in 1997, when the Backstreet Boys sang I don’t care who you are / Where you’re from / What …

Sin Wai Kin at Blindspot Gallery

Published by Artomity Magazine

Sin Wai Kin (fka Victoria Sin)It’s Always YouNov 23 – Jan 8, 2022 Blindspot Gallery 15/F, Po Chai Industrial Building28 Wong Chuk Hang Road, Wong Chuk HangHong Kong+852 2517 6238Tuesday – Saturday, 10.30am – 6.30pm http://www.blindspotgallery.com Blindspot Gallery is delighted to present It’s Always You, Sin Wai Kin’s first solo exhibition in Asia. Presenting works never previously shown in Hong Kong, chronologically from 2016 to 2021, this exhibition traces the creative journey of the artist, who again and again reinvents themselves to hold multiple identities, and to shift between different ways of being. Encompassing film, face wipes, performance, texts, ephemera, Sin’s practice embraces a breadth of material and gender expressions and the worlding of alterity. The manifold journey of It’s Always You manifests the perils and joys of naming, the cycle of birth and endless rebirth, the inevitability of change, and the ease and grace of metamorphosis. Sin Wai Kin is a carrier bag, a gatherer and forager of characters, dances, fictions, truths, histories, and possible futures.