Sin Wai Kin: 'I have had to unlearn so many narratives'

'Indifferent Idols.' 'Kiss My Genders.' 'DO DISTURB.' Over the past few years, the work of multimedia artist Sin Wai Kan (formerly Victoria Sin) – a staple of London's queer club culture – has appeared in group exhibitions with a notably defiant slant in Taipei, London, and Paris, as well as during the Venice Biennale and Art Basel Hong Kong. Through films and performances that constitute a kind of double drag, Sin highlights viewers' expectations and fantasies, then proceeds to slyly – and completely – dismantle them.

In this 'Meet the Artists' video, Sin describes how they found a home within London's fluid drag scene. 'It was not about trying to be a perfect representation of a gender that you weren't,' they say. 'It was about blowing up gender and identity completely.' Whether tackling artifice and objectification, colonial erasures and contemporary reclamations, or tropes from old Hollywood or Cantonese opera, Sin's work revels in the dissolution of binaries.

To mark this exclusive first look at their new film, A Dream of Wholeness in Parts (2020-2021), the artist is also revealing a name change: 'I am in the process of changing my name from Victoria Sin to Sin Wai Kin or 單慧乾, which is my Chinese name given to me at birth, but up until this point used mostly by my family. A Dream of Wholeness in Parts is the first work to be created under that name.' Going forward, they say, '"Victoria Sin" will still exist in relationship to my drag and my work inevitably.' It is a credit to their creations that this kind of multiplicity feels like the logical option.

Sin Wai Kin is represented by Chi-Wen Gallery, Taipei, and Soft Opening, London. A Dream of Wholeness in Parts is produced by Chi-Wen Productions and supported by Soft Opening and Hayward Gallery Touring's British Art Show 9.