Art Review: Sin Wai Kin: It’s Always You
Now On Exhibit At The Buffalo AKG Art Museum
Sin Wai Kin is mixed-race and non-binary; their art is filled with a self-reflection most of us never engage in.
My skin is white, but I am aware that the world is filled with people whose epidermal hue registers on a boundless continuum from translucent white to deep black. My white skin, blond hair, and blue eyes do not make me objectively better or worse than any of my fellow humans despite disreputable, racist, bullshit, junk “science” that suggests otherwise.
I am biologically male; my gender perception corresponds with that. Further, I am romantically attracted to members of the opposite sex. This makes me “cisgender” and “heterosexual,” but it certainly does not make me “normal.”
As a married, middle-aged white man who acts and dresses like a married, middle-aged white man, society has never questioned my humanity or forced me to defend who I love or how I dress.
That is not the case for non-binary and transgender people.
As a civil rights lawyer I represented many members of the LGBTQ+ community who were the victims of unspeakable acts of discrimination and abuse. I quickly learned the hard lesson my brave clients had learned the hard way: much of society cares little for them and its legal systems treat the myriad, glaring injustices against their humanity with eye-rolling indifference.
Sin Wai Kin (they) is a Toronto-born artist whose deep, psychological art interrogates society’s binary views of human sexuality. Motivated by Octavia Butler’s belief that “the more personal the more universal,” they (Sin) created a single character, Victoria Sin, and observed how it operated in the world.
Victoria Sin led to the creation of more characters and “It’s Always You,” a pastiche of the “Boy Band.” It consists of a quartet of performative archetypes: the serious one, the egotist, the weirdo, and the storyteller.
“It’s Always You” is currently on exhibit at the AKG Buffalo Art Museum; it is an attenuated version of the original exhibit at the Blindspot Gallery in Hong Kong.
The AKG installation in the new Gundlach Building consists of two video screens surrounded by curtains playing a high-definition loop of a generic “Boy Band.” Sin uses primary colors, prosthetic torsos and extensive makeup to mimic the Boy Band’s non-threatening, vaguely homoerotic, vibe.
The score consists of a prominent heartbeat and airy synthesizers; the “band”members lip sync bland lyrics (“one plus one’s not two when you’re with me - you’re like infinity”) which are spoken rather than sung. The room is wallpapered with logos and cheap posters demonstrating how performative sexuality is commodified for mass consumption.
“The Buffalo AKG’s “It’s Always You” exhibit deconstructs the “Boy Band” to expose society’s deep and often dark fascination with human sexuality. It is a compelling display.
“It’s Always You” continues at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum until August 19, 2024. More information can be found here.
the images here are awesome. I want to see this.