Sin Wai Kin

The Fortress, 2024

The Fortress presents, then slowly takes apart, supposedly archetypal “Man,” the universal Enlightenment subject that justified Western colonialism, and continues to justify the exploitation of natural resources.  As first encountered at Alfalah Theatre, the subject, as embodied by the character Wai King, rehearses and performatively constructs his position of superiority and othering. Transported to Lahore Fort, the subject meets his own ghost and the remnants of his own past narratives, layered one atop the other. There, he witnesses the shifting paradigms of history and realizes the entanglement and inseparability of being with the world around him. The video explores themes of identity, power, and knowledge–critiquing Western notions of universality and the Enlightenment privileging of reason and individualism. Drawing inspiration from Eastern philosophies, particularly Sufi thought, the film examines the fragmented nature of human existence and critiques the notion of a singular, homogenized human experience.  The work takes its title in part from a section of the Mathnawi by the Sufi poet Rūmī:

 

When that original golden Light manifested in form,

Multiplicity came about, like the shadows created by crenellation on a fortress wall.

Demolish your fortress and that crenellation,

Let the shadows of separateness leave this group! 

–Rumi, Mathnawi, book 1: 681, 686-689

Sin Wai Kin (b. 1991, Toronto) draws on experiences of existing between binary categories to realize alternate worlds in moving image, performance, writing, and print that engage desire, identification, and consciousness. The artist has been nominated for the 2024 Jarman Award, and their film, A Dream of Wholeness in Parts (2021), was nominated for the 2022 Turner Prize.  They have had solo exhibitions at the Taipei Contemporary Art Center (2018), the Fondazione Memmo, Rome (2023), and Accelerator, Stockholm (2024), and also been included in group exhibitions at the Venice Biennale (2019), Jameel Art Center (2020), and Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2022).  This is their first exhibition in South Asia.