I’m excited to be showing ten glass works and a two-channel video installation at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (House of World Cultures) in Berlin, in a group exhibition “Forgive Us Our Trespasses”, till 8 December 2024. It is the first time I have been able to show a whole series of glass plates…
Read More
My video “Requiem” is showing in the “Disobedience Archive” group exhibition, part of the main show at the 60th Venice Biennale (20 April – 24 Nov 2024). Curated by Marco Scotini, assistant curator Arnold Braho. Requiem, 2017 from “One Day We’ll Understand”, 2015-on-going Single-channel video and sound installation, 16:9, sound, colour Duration: 06:08 mins Requiem…
Read More
Thrilled to announce the world premiere season of “One Day We’ll Understand” 《有那么一天》, a new multimedia performance I’ve been making from my long project on the anti-colonial war in Malaya. This production is a commission by the Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, for Esplanade Presents: The Studios, and will be presented at Singtel Waterfront…
Read More
My glass works from “The Suitcase Is A Little Bit Rotten” and the two-channel video “The Mountain That Hid” are in the group exhibition “Nomadic”, curated by Dr. Vennes Cheng, at the The Jim Thompson Art Center in Bangkok. It opened on 21 March and is on till 2 June 2024. In these lovely installation…
Read More
I’m grateful to curator Matthew Lawson Garrett and the team at Datsuijo independent art space for mounting this solo exhibition of my work in Tokyo, transforming my first artist book into a physical installation (and with translation into Japanese)! The book, “She Never Rode That Trishaw Again” (https://chiyinsim.com/she-never-rode-that-trishaw-again/), is the first of possibly four I’m…
Read More
My series of glass works The Suitcase Is A Little Bit Rotten and two-channel film The Mountain That Hid are in a group exhibition “Double Exposure” at Camera Austria in Graz. Curatorial text by Anna Voswinckel: The examination of the complex, transnational political entanglements of colonialism and its traumatic effects on (family) biographies forms the starting…
Read More
I first became interested in Magic Lantern slides in learning through @gabbymoser’s scholarship about how they were a colonial pedagogical tool — specifically, they were used in a series of eight lectures cast as geography lessons to teach pupils around the British empire about its colonies. I became interested in what was inscribed in those…
Read More
“The Suitcase Is A Little Bit Rotten”, drawn from a series of 40 glass slides , and “The Mountain That Hid”, a two-channel video work, are on view at Zilberman Gallery, Berlin, in the group show “Transit”. Zilberman | Berlin is delighted to announce the opening of its new space in Berlin’s Schlüterstraße 45 with…
Read More
“Taking a speculative turn while considering the continuity of family narratives, Sim grafts the image of her young child and her disappeared grandfather into these found magic lantern slide images. While they could never meet in real life, the lineage and connection between Sim’s child and grandfather is enacted in this highly constructed–if not already…
Read More
An installation of photographic prints and a newly-created VR piece, ‘The Garden Of No Return”, from my “Shifting Sands” project is on view at the Gropius Bau Berlin till August 2023. Indigo Waves and Other Stories Re-Navigating the Afrasian Sea and Notions of Diaspora 6 April to 13 August 2023 Taking the stories and histories…
Read More
“This meticulously crafted and quietly powerful work probes the ways in which the past reads differently depending on how and by whom history is written.” Full text: https://hyperallergic.com/772131/photographing-historys-silences-and-gaps/
Read More
New short film out: The Mountain That Hid, 2022 One of the new commissions I’ve worked on this year is this short two-channel essay film for Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary‘s St_age platform. https://www.stage.tba21.org/episode/episode-09 This two-channel film is an experiment coming out of my archive of videos shot over the past decade, around my project on my…
Read More
“…Sim Chi Yin’s multimedia project One Day We’ll Understand (2016–ongoing) — despite its stern, museological feel, a remarkably stirring exploration of the anti-colonial guerrilla war waged in British Malaya in the mid-20th century …” https://www.frieze.com/article/17th-istanbul-biennial
Read More
Installation views of my new solo exhibition in Berlin on my long, on-going project re-narrating the anti-colonial war in British Malaya — a story that is as small and as large as one can make it, for all the resonances across the decolonisation wars in the “Third World” at the time. A period of history…
Read More
She Never Rode That Trishaw Again tells the story of Loo Ngan Yue, a woman widowed by the British war against anti-colonial forces in Malaya — a 12-year conflict that became a template for other counter-insurgency campaigns around the world, including Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Artist and author Sim Chi Yin juxtaposes vacation photographs of Loo…
Read More
A solo exhibition of my new work “Interventions”, part of my broader “One Day We’ll Understand” project, opened 4 July 2021 at the Les Rencontres d’Arles. Curated by Sam I-shan. The exhibition is installed in the Abbaye de Montmajour, a Benedictine monastery from the 10th century. https://www.rencontres-arles.com/en/expositions/view/1032/sim-chi-yin A review essay on the show, by British…
Read More
I’ve been working on “Interventions”, a new solo show to debut at Les Rencontres de la photographie, Arles in July. This is a new chapter of my ongoing work on the anti-colonial war in Malaya, focused on my reinterpretations of the colonial representation of this war and its participants. Excited to debut it at Arles,…
Read More
Won the Jimei x Arles Discovery Prize in November 2020. Deeply appreciate this surprise win, which means I’ll do a solo show at Les Rencontres d’Arles in France next summer.
Read More
Excited to be among 7 artists shortlisted for the Tim Hetherington Trust Visionary Award 2020 — a special grant in the spirit of Tim’s ever seeking different and unique ways of telling stories of our world. Tim was always genre-defying, irreverently multi-disciplinary and experimental. Congratulations to fellow shortlisted artists! Visionary Award shortlisted artists 2020 Daniel…
Read More
On the occasion of Mothers’ Day and his one lunar month birthday, I wrote a note to our son who was born at the peak of the Coronavirus pandemic in the UK. ———– “Dear Lucas, You marked one lunar month on earth today. In good Chinese tradition, we made red-dyed eggs to celebrate this day.…
Read More
In anticipation of the birth of our baby at the peak of the Covid 19 pandemic here in the UK, I wrote a series of letters to the unborn Lucas. —- “Dear Lucas This is the view of the sky from your cot… from a corner of our bedroom in this one-bedroom apartment in south…
Read More
In expecting to give birth at the peak of the Covid 19 pandemic here in London, I wrote letters to our unborn son… “Dear Lucas In three weeks or less, you are due to join us. What a chaotic world you are being born into…. On Monday, your dad and I saw you in…
Read More
Excited to join the stable of artists at Zilberman Gallery making work on socio-political themes from around the world, with this new representation by the gallery announced via e-flux today. With thanks to the team at the gallery; look forward to making new, multidisciplinary work with your support! https://www.art-agenda.com/announcements/319098/sim-chi-yin
Read More
Part of my series on nuclear weapons, “Most People Were Silent is showing in Art Basel’s Virtual Viewiing Room, alongside work by fellow Zilberman Gallery artists including Isaac Chong Wai, Pedro Gómez-Egaña, Jaffa Lam, Burcak Bingol. This is the Covid19-era alternative after Art Basel Hong Kong was called off this month. https://www.artbasel.com/viewing-rooms ・・・ Visit our @artbasel Online Viewing Room dedicated…
Read More
My conversation with Prof. Tejaswini Niranjana in the Hanart TZ Gallery in Hong Kong.
Read More
ArTouch: “Whither faith, whither politics? In today’s climate of complex and pessimistic global politics, is it the case that ‘one day we’ll understand’?” Hong Kong Tatler, “10 Hong Kong Art Exhibitions To See This Summer” South China Morning Post, “Legacy of colonialism: Singapore artist’s show on Malayan Emergency and its resonance for Hong Kong” Art…
Read More
“One Day We’ll Understand” 2015 – on-going Remnants Photographic installation, variable dimensions Requiem Two-channel video and sound installation, 16:9, sound, colour Duration: 12:34 mins Sim Chi Yin’s Remnants and Requiem take us on a cinematic journey through traces of hidden histories. The ethereal landscapes she conjures are an unspoken archive of an undeclared war. Evocative…
Read More
I was thrilled to participate in this Magnum Photos panel discussion on how can images affect cultural, social and political situations alongside Ella Saltmarshe from The Long Time Project, Magnum Cultural Director, Sophie Wright and Emma Lewis, Assistant Curator. It’s important to investigate the agency of images in relation to environmental awareness and consider how images can affect and…
Read More
Alessandra Cianetti and Xavier de Sousa of Performingborders I LIVE organized this opportunity for Chi Yin to do her performative reading and be in thoughtful conversation with curator Annie Jael Kwan about hidden (family and national) histories, counter narratives, embodied trauma and performative acts, intended and unintended, at the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts in Brighton on March…
Read More
This is an excerpt from a piece I wrote in response to a question about ethics in image making for a day of study at London’s Tate Britain, an event I co-led with Hilary Roberts of the Imperial War Museum and photographer and educator Anthony Luvera. You can learn more about the event and read…
Read More
“They emerge out of nowhere. Culturally, aesthetically, geologically, ecologically, architecturally. They possess no foundation and little fundament. Some of them stand unfinished, defeated by the whim of a politician or the tremor of global financial markets. For artificial islands don’t stand for anything but the perspective of quick economic profits and the mirage of luxury…
Read More
“Most People Were Silent”, the video installation on nuclear weapons produced on commission for Nobels Fredssenter | Nobel Peace Center, Nobel Prize , has been shortlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize 2019. The video diptych, alongside other shortlisted works, will be shown in an exhibition that opens in the York Art Gallery on March 7th. This installation was shown in…
Read More
Had a lovely weekend doing the performative reading I’ve devised around my longterm project on my family history and the Malayan Emergency, at the closing of our group show UnAuthorised Medium curated by Annie Jael Kwan at Framer Framed gallery in Amsterdam. Thank you to Annie for the hard, hard work curating, coordinating and shepherding each of our works…
Read More
My project ‘Shifting Sands’ is being featured in Migrant Journal No. 5: Micro Odysseys. I presented this ongoing project on November 5th at the Tate Modern Book Shop in London for the launch of this new edition of Migrant Journal, which is available now. Migrant Journal is a unique six-issue project that explores the circulation of people,…
Read More
My ongoing project “One Day We’ll Understand,” which is currently part of the group show ‘UnAuthorized Medium’ in Amsterdam, reviewed in ArtAsiaPacific. I’m showing an experimental installation of portraits, still life images and text. Installation view by Eva Broekema. “The transcripts and mail correspondences are based on Sim’s six years of research into her family’s oral…
Read More
This print is currently for sale on Magnum’s website for just $100 as part of their Square Print Sale – only from Oct. 29 to Nov. 2, 2018. From the series, “Shifting Sands.” Malaysia. 2017. “Windblown or washed up over millennia, sand is ubiquitous. Whether inside an hourglass or as an idiom, it often refers to…
Read More
I enjoyed this conversation with Objects Lessons Space about the place of facts in making art, experimentation and the power of stories. We delved into the slippage between fact and fiction and the role of archives in my work. The piece also includes excerpts from various bodies of work, including One Day We’ll Understand and Most People Were…
Read More
Thanks to Art Radar for the feature of “Most people were silent.” The work, on nuclear weapons in our world, was originally commissioned by Nobels Fredssenter | Nobel Peace Center for the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize laureate International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). You can head over to the link below to read the full piece, which includes an…
Read More
A piece of my on-going history project “One Day We’ll Understand” is in a group show in Amsterdam 15 September to 18 November, at Framer Framed gallery. “Unauthorised Medium”, curated by Annie Kwan. https://www.magnumphotos.com/events/event/sim-chi-yin-unauthorised-medium/ https://framerframed.nl/en/exposities/expositie-unauthorised-medium/ I’m showing an experimental installation of portraits, still life images and text from my “One Day We’ll Understand” project. Installation view by…
Read More
Thanks Mackerel and Marc Nair for this interview on my solo exhibition “Most People Were Silent” on at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore till 10 October. Curated by Caterina Riva. http://www.mackerel.life/inside-the-ripple-an-interview-with-sim-chi-yin/ The work, on nuclear weapons in our world, was originally commissioned by Nobels Fredssenter | Nobel Peace Center for the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize laureate International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). With…
Read More
Spoke to Magnum.com on where I am with my work and practice. Part of Magnum’s series of interviews introducing the new nominee members this year. https://www.magnumphotos.com/theory-and-practice/magnum-nominee-sim-chi-yin-waited-years-to-be-able-to-commit-to-photography/
Read More
Thanks luxury portal Keyyes for this interview and photo shoot, on my solo exhibition “Most People Were Silent”, on at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore till 10 October. Curated by Caterina Riva. The work is a new installation of the exhibition commission I created for the Nobel Peace Prize at the Nobels Fredssenter | Nobel Peace Center last December. This profile article comes…
Read More
On joining Magnum Photos as its first Southeast Asian photographer, on the Nobel Peace Prize exhibition commission, on the aesthetics of horror, on starting a research PhD at War Studies/ King’s College London, and on shuffling towards the big 4-0! Thanks The Straits Times and Toh Wen Li and the Lianhe Zaobao and Chow Yian Peng, and the two photographers for these interviews and profiles.…
Read More
Grazie to these two inspiring women who made possible my exhibition at Cortona On The Move of “Fallout”, the project on nuclear weapons originally commissioned by the Nobels Fredssenter | Nobel Peace Center: festival curator Arianna Rinaldo, and Nobel Peace Centre exhibitions director Liv Astrid Sverdrup!! The diptychs, video installation and singles were installed in what used to be a…
Read More
“Most People Were Silent”, my solo exhibition on nuclear weapons, originally a commission for the Nobel Peace Prize / Nobels Fredssenter | Nobel Peace Center, will open at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore on 20 July, in a installation of video and still images suspended from screens. It’s been a pleasure working this new installation of this work with…
Read More
Excited to begin a new chapter of creating, making, learning, thinking, experimenting, collaborating with Magnum Photos, as my work evolves and diversifies, and combines with explorations in art and academic research. I’ve joined the agency as a nominee: https://www.magnumphotos.com/…/updates-2018-magnum-photos-…/ A special thank you to Jonas Bendiksen and Susan Meiselas for shepherding me through this process, and several friends for helping me…
Read More
Thank you to the British Journal of Photography for a 12-page feature on my evolving work, practice and thinking, in its July 2018 issue catching up with three photographers previously on its “Ones To Watch” list. http://www.bjp-online.com/2018/06/sim-chi-yin/ | “When we first featured Sim Chi Yin in Ones To Watch in 2014, she seemed to have…
Read More
The New Yorker made a video piece on my Nobel Peace Prize exhibition commission “Fallout”. Video and interview by Gareth Smit.
Read More
I presented my project on my family history and the Cold War in British Malaya at the Magnum Foundation “Counter Histories” symposium at the New School in New York, 1 May 2018. A great day of learning and sharing with other practitioners working on counter narratives. Photo by Emma Raynes
Read More
Arianna Rinaldo is putting me in the cellar but I’m excited about it! My “Fallout” project on nuclear weapons, an exhibition commission I produced for the Nobel Peace Prize 2017 / Nobels Fredssenter | Nobel Peace Center will be exhibited at Cortona On The Move festival in Italy in July. The diptychs, single images and video…
Read More
My project ‘The Rat Tribe’ was featured in the 15th annual Istanbul Biennial in 2017 alongside work by artists of all kinds and backgrounds under the theme ‘A Good Neighbour.’ Frieze Magazine wrote of The Rat Tribe: “Some dwellings are more dispassionately treated, as in Sim Chi Yin’s The Rat Tribe (2011–14), which captures the poor inhabitants…
Read More
SIM CHI YIN: MOST PEOPLE WERE SILENT Photographs, video and audio installation, various dimensions, 2018. Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore Earl Lu Gallery LASALLE College of the Arts 21 July – 10 October 2018 Curator Caterina Riva’s text “Most People Were Silent” is an exhibition composed of photographs taken in the vicinity of nuclear sites…
Read More
Rat Tribe -CNN interview
This is "Rat Tribe -CNN interview" by Sim Chi Yin on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.
Kristie Lu Stout of CNN interviews me on the “Rat Tribe” project I did on migrant workers living in Beijing’s air raid shelters and basements. https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2015/02/18/intv-lu-stout-sim-chi-yin-china-rat-tribe.cnn
Read More
Thank you very much Kathy Ryan for having me sit for a contributor portrait by you for The New York Times Magazine. Thank you for sharing this special light! #Repost @kathyryan with @get_repost ・・・ Sim Chi Yin 5/3/18 9:54 a.m. @nytmag. Yesterday, Sim Chi Yin was awarded the Getty Images and The Chris Hondros Fund Award at the Aperture Gallery. Chi Yin…
Read MoreChris Hondros prize acceptance speech 3 May 2018
This is "Chris Hondros prize acceptance speech 3 May 2018" by Sim Chi Yin on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.
” A heartfelt thank you to everyone, who makes this prize possible, especially the board of the Fund, Christina, Pancho, Todd, Jeff. Thank you for awarding it this year to work that is super slow-burn, un-iconic and far from the frontlines. Thank you for recognising work that is dead unsexy. This sort of slow…
Read More
Excited to be able to present “Fallout” my Nobel Peace Prize exhibition commission in New York with Fred Ritchin, a leading thinker of our time on images, communication and photography, and Dean Emeritus at the ICP – International Center of Photography, and Alex Wellerstein, historian of the nuclear bomb. At the Magnum Foundation, April 24, 6pm. Friends in New York,…
Read More
A piece I photographed and researched last year in Vietnam, on the rampant sand mining on the Mekong River and the impact it has on landscapes and communities has just been published on National Geographic. Chunks of the Mekong Delta are melting away into the river daily, taking with it people’s ancestral lands and homes,…
Read More
I’ll be exhibiting part of the family history/ colonial history project I’ve been working on — “One Day We’ll Understand” — at the Esplanade Singapore’s Jendela Gallery during Singapore Art Week, in a three-artist show titled “Relics”, engaging with colonial legacies and hidden histories. Curated by Sam I-shan. The other artists are Sarker Protick from Bangladesh and…
Read More
In September (2017), I was commissioned to create this year’s Nobel Peace Prize exhibition. As soon as this year’s Peace laureate — the global civil society group, International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) — was announced on October 6, I have been working to produce this show that opened in Oslo after the Peace…
Read More
Excited and honoured to be showing a set of 12 images from my “Rat Tribe” project in the 15th Istanbul Biennale, which is this year themed “a good neighbour”. Thoughtfully and subtly curated by star contemporary artist duo Elmgreen and Dragset, the biennale exhibits the work of 56 artists from 32 countries exploring the ideas…
Read More
I would conquer the Cedar Forest. I will set my hand to it and chop it down. — Epic of Gilgamesh
Read More
Mounds of sand sit beneath a row of pile drivers on Dadeng island where the Chinese city of Xiamen is building a new airport on reclaimed land.
Read More
Every morning, a metamorphosis takes place below the ground of China’s capital. In a world without sun or fresh air, people roll out of bed in windowless rooms, empty bedpans into communal toilets, pay 50 cents for a five-minute shower, ascend concrete stairways to the outside world and transform themselves from residents of the city’s…
Read More
Their sweaty, sinewy bodies writhed in ecstasy. Fists clenched, they punched the air and screamed with abandon. These young men and women were letting it all out at a concert by Myanmar’s hottest rock band, Iron Cross, in the heart of the old capital of Yangon.
Read More
Deep in the landlocked rural heartland of China, some 6 million Chinese workers lie ill with “Black Lung” disease or pneumoconiosis, the country’s most prevalent occupational sickness.
Read More
In Los Angeles and Beijing alike, millions of workers who have left their homes and often their families in search of prosperity find themselves at the very bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.
Read More
Her World Young Woman Achiever of the Year 2014-Sim Chi Yin speech
This is "Her World Young Woman Achiever of the Year 2014-Sim Chi Yin speech" by Sim Chi Yin on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who…
A “thank you” speech I made in accepting the “Young Woman Achiever of the Year” award given out by Her World in Singapore, in 2014.
Read More
Thousands of Indonesians armed with plastic scoops, pick axes and jerry cans work to find tin each day on Bangka Island – just off the eastern coast of Sumatra — extracting the tin that becomes the solder that binds components in the world’s tablet computers, smartphones, and other electronics.
Read More
I had the pleasure of making new band photos for Beijing indie psychedelic experimental group Chui Wan recently.
Read More
Sand is one of the resources the world is guzzling at the fastest speed. I started researching this fascinating topic last year and began to photograph it on an artist’s residency with the Exactly Foundation. I was coincidentally asked by The New York Times Magazine to photograph a chapter in Singapore of an on-going global…
Read More