Organised by Somerset House
IMPORTANT: You must follow this link to join the livestream
WATCH via this link HERE at:
Wed 26 May from 21.00
Fri 28 May from 10.00
Hosted by Shen Xin, a Chinese artist working in moving image installation and performances empowering alternative histories, with You Mi, Wang Tuo and Zairong Xiang.
This broadcast, hosted by Shen Xin, asks the following questions through a selection of works:
If the variety show exhibits symptoms of social conditionings, can its participants distance themselves from the symptoms?
How can a nation-state be seen as land when settler/post/decolonial critiques and their applications are questionable? How do we speak about our own ethnicity when the doors behind us remain closed, and with walls around each of us?
One participant's provocation, "Does China really exist?" is brought into a dialogical structure that asks, "Can fear be cute?" Discussions around ethnicity are pumped into our air hammers and ghostly encounters are channeled across lifetimes, painted in smoke and fire.
Shen Xin (b. 1990, Chengdu) creates moving image installations and performances that empower alternative histories, relations, and potentials between individuals and nation-states. They seek to create affirmative spaces of belonging that embrace polyphonic narratives and identities. Shen Xin’s most recent work, Brine Lake (A New Body), will have its world premiere in Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning, Gwangju Biennale (2021), and its North American premiere in their first US museum solo exhibition at Walker Art Center (2021). Shen Xin has been a visiting artist at numerous institutions including, Slade School of Fine Art, Goldsmiths University London, University of Connecticut, and Newcastle University. They received the BALTIC Artists’ Award (2017) and held the Rijksakademie residency in Amsterdam (2018-19). Shen Xin practice on Miní Sóta Makhóčhe, the land of the Dakhóta Oyáte, as well as in London, UK