Sin Wai Kin

Through a practice that encompasses performance, moving image, sound, writing and print, Sin Wai Kin reveals and subverts traditional, entrenched and idealised notions of femininity, and represents how identity is transmutable, transient and often consciously performed. Using drag as both mode and aesthetic, the artist undermines conventionally rigid binaries – not only those that separate gender, but also the binaries of life and death, dreaming and waking, and self and other – through parody and the invocation of fantasy and fiction. Sin Wai Kin is influenced by a Taoist allegory, in which a man dreams that he is a butterfly, before waking up unsure whether he is a butterfly dreaming that he is a man or vice versa. To perform one of their characters, the artist dons a wig made from their own hair, shed by their previous self, questioning at what point one becomes aware of their performance of self, and demonstrating the ease with which one slips between different identities. ...

Founded in 2018 by Antonia Marsh, Soft Opening presents UK-based and international emerging contemporary artists, and often their first solo presentations in London. Focusing on work pushing the conventional limits of medium or material, the gallery presents a wide range of media and practices. Soft Opening built its early program with projects that responded to the gallery’s unique first location in Piccadilly Circus Underground Station. Opening a second space in East London in 2019 saw programming strategy develop as Soft Opening began participating in international art fairs and representing artists. Programming is now focused at this East London space. In 2020 the gallery began publishing artist monographs - the first was with Tenant of Culture in 2020 followed by Gina Fischli in 2021 and Sin Wai Kin in 2022. ...