Dazed 100

My name is Sian Fan and I’m an interdisciplinary artist working with movement, the body and technology to explore embodiment, identity, and human experience in the digital age. Drawing on my background in contemporary and aerial dance I suspend, augment, and interrupt the body via choreography and digital media. My work manifests as a meshing of the physical and the virtual, taking form as sculpture, costume, performance, animation, installation, and new media. Coming from mixed heritage (Chinese/British) my practise meditates on my tangled identity, exploring what it means to exist in between worlds. Via my work I delve into my murky relationship with my own heritage, reflecting on diaspora, cultural imposter syndrome and the objectification of Asiatic bodies. I am particularly interested in the uneasy synchronicities between Asian and cyborgian bodies; in popularised depictions of Asiatic bodies in anime and video games; and in the thresholds of human identity where one exists as both and neither at the same time. By extension I am fascinated by virtual identities, and in how we construct virtual bodies which we cast in hyperspace, extending beyond our physical bodies. I am concerned with the immaterial nature of spiritual and metaphysical identity and with being human in our increasingly digitised and hyperconnected world. Through my work I seek to discover new ways to coexist with technology.