“The Mountain That Hid”, solo exhibition at Datsuijo, Tokyo

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…

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The Suitcase Is A Little Bit Rotten on view at Camera Austria, Graz

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…

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“The Suitcase Is A Little Bit Rotten”, shown at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program studio exhibition, New York

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…

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Shifting Sands at Gropius Bau Berlin

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…

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New Book – “She Never Rode That Trishaw Again”

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…

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“One Day We’ll Understand”: “Interventions” – solo show in Arles opens

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…

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Solo show at Les Rencontres d’Arles
Art, Featured, News

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,…

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“One Day We’ll Understand”

“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…

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Shifting Sands

Shifting Sands (Singapore, Malaysia, China, 2017 – on-going) The world is running out of sand. It seems counter-intuitive but sand, besides air and water, is our most used commodity. The insatiable demand for this non-renewable resource has led to environmental impact where it’s mined and to mafias driving the lucrative business. The global depletion of…

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“Most People Were Silent”

Fallout (China-North Korea border, United States, 2017) In this exhibition commission for the Nobel Peace Prize 2017 — won by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) — I created a series of diptychs pairing nuclear-related landscapes from the North Korea-China border and the United States. My intention was to get the viewer to…

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“The Rat Tribe”

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…

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Burmese Spring

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.

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Tin Men

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.

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