It's Always You
Sin Wai Kin
單慧乾
Production date
2021
Object Detail
Media
dual channel video (colour, sound)
Measurements
4 min 5 sec
Notes
Sin Wai Kin is a rule-breaker, refusing to be confined by binaries of male or female, East or West, self or other, or even dreaming and waking. In this dual-channel video work 'It’s Always You', Sin merges archetypes of traditional Cantonese and Peking opera with contemporary drag aesthetics. Their dissection of the modern boyband through male drag points out the performativity of masculinity. Sin says, “My feminine characters are always over the top, but my relationship to masculinity is a little different. Suddenly, it was not about taking something off, but rather trying something on. From a cultural perspective, so often masculinity is equated with an absence of performance, and thus seen as a site of authenticity and authority.” The popularity of boybands highlight how identities are strategically commodified for mass consumption, containing within them the promise of love, fantasy, and collective escape. Sin adopts the role of all four members in their boyband, each assuming an independent persona. Aimed at appealing to the different tastes of an audience, Sin’s characters include: the pretty boy, the serious one, the playful one, and the hunk. Appropriating the archetypes used both in opera and boybands becomes the perfect way to talk about pre-determined societal scripts. Sin gives us a chance to rethink those scripts, unlearning certain narratives to create new ways of being and desiring.
Accession number
2021.381