The Times of Our Lives
Accelerator presents the first solo exhibition in Scandinavia of London-based artist Sin Wai Kin (b. 1991, Toronto, CA). The exhibition spans Accelerator’s two exhibition halls and features several of Sin’s recent video installations. The centrepiece is the new video work The Times of Our Lives, from which the exhibition takes its name.
Sin Wai Kin, 'Dreaming the End' (film still), 2023 © the artist. Commissioned by Fondazione Memmo, Rome. Produced by Mira Productions. Courtesy the artist.
Sin Wai Kin, 'Dreaming the End' (film still), 2023 © the artist. Commissioned by Fondazione Memmo, Rome. Produced by Mira Productions. Courtesy the artist.
About the exhibition
In The Times of Our Lives, a science fiction sitcom is played out. It depicts a day in the home of a stereotypical, wholesome all-American couple. In this two-channel video installation, the chronology is circular and set in an indefinable time. For this work, Sin has deepened their long interest in physics and cosmology, looking at different aspects of time as a concept. Drawing from theories of quantum mechanics and general activity, the work plays with the idea that there is no absolute time. This is used as a metaphor for the experience of reality as an individual and a questioning of assumptions about objective truth – something Sin often returns to.
Sin works with performance, moving image, installation, writing and print, but above all else, it is a practice of storytelling. In their work, there is an inherent concentration on the power of language over the personal and social body and a belief that the stories told about our realities also create it. They use speculative fiction to challenge normative knowledge production and cultural narratives. The binary categories that characterise our consciousness of ourselves and the world around us are disrupted through references and methods from science fiction, drag, Cantonese opera and popular culture. In Sin’s multifaceted world-building, characters, time, space, and narratives can behave with contradictions, mutations, transitions and glitches. The audience is invited to testimonies from spaces of liminality that go beyond gender and cultural dichotomies, between life and death, self and other, dream and awakening, fantasy and reality.
Sin’s cosmos is inhabited by enigmatic characters, some of whom regularly appear in different guises in various works. One figure that appears in several works at Accelerator is The Storyteller. In the role of a news anchor in Today’s Top Stories (2020), The Storyteller explains ‘In the end I can tell you that from the beginning there was neither beginning nor end just a becoming with then becoming apart then becoming with then becoming apart then (…)’. The main constant in The Times of Our Lives is change. Sin’s narrative is imbued with the possibility of changing reality through the performative power of storytelling.
About Sin Wai Kin
Sin Wai Kin (b. 1991, Toronto, CA) brings fantasy to life through storytelling in moving image, performance, writing, and print. Drawing on experiences of existing between binary categories, their work realises alternate worlds to describe lived experiences of desire, identification and consciousness.
The artist was the recipient of the 24th Baloise Art Prize at Art Basel 2023 for their film series Portraits (2023). Their film, A Dream of Wholeness in Parts (2021) was nominated for the 2022 Turner Prize, and included in the touring exhibition the British Art Show 9, as well as being screened at the British Film Institute’s 65th London Film Festival. Upcoming solo exhibitions include Accelerator, Stockholm (2024); Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong (2024). Recent solo exhibitions include MUDAM, Luxembourg (2024); Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York (2024); Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley (2023); Soft Opening, London (2023); Dreaming the End at Fondazione Memmo, Rome (2023); A Dream of Wholeness in Parts at Soft Opening, London (2022); It’s Always You at Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong (2021); She’s Hopeful (2018) at Soft Opening, London (2020); Narrative Reflections on Looking at Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb (2020) and Indifferent Idols at Taipei Contemporary Art Centre, Taipei (2018).
Group exhibitions include Greater Toronto Art (GTA24) at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto; a collaborative presentation with Rainbow Chan at Cement Fondu, Paddington (forthcoming, 2024); CUTE at Somerset House, London (2024); After Laughter Comes Tears at Mudam, Luxembourg (2023); MYTH MAKERS — SPECTROSYNTHESIS III, Taikwun, Hong Kong (2022); Drawing Attention at The British Museum, London (2022). Sin’s work is held in the collections of The British Museum Prints & Drawings; White Rabbit Gallery, Sydney; Ferens Art Gallery, Hull; The Ingram Collection of Modern British Art, UK; Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo; Sunpride Foundation, Hong Kong and M+ Museum, Hong Kong.