• Issue
  • Jan 02, 2024

New York: Disobedient to History: Interview with Sim Chi Yin

Installation view of SIM CHI YIN’s Shifting Sands, 2017- , photoprints, wallpaper, VR installation, poetry and research materials, dimensions variable, in "Indigo Waves and Other Stories," at Gropius Bau, Berlin, 2023. Photo by Andre Carvalho. Courtesy the artist and Gropius Bau.

Sim Chi Yin had an active year in 2023, participating in nine group shows, including at the Barbican in London, Gropius Bau in Berlin, and Camera Austria in Graz. Meanwhile, M+ in Hong Kong acquired 17 works from across the ongoing One Day We’ll Understand (2015– ) project, including photographic prints, glass works, and a video installation about the “Malayan Emergency” and her grandfather’s deportation to China by the British colonial government in Malaya and his subsequent execution. Working with director Tamara Saulwick and dramaturge Kok Heng Leun, Sim is reimagining her lecture-performance from One Day We’ll Understand as a 60-minute fully staged performance, which will have its world premier at the Esplanade in Singapore in August 2024. She is also working to publish the second of four books from that project later this year.