Victoria Sin: “I’m trying to break down the binary of thinking and feeling”

Victoria Sin is trying something new. I meet the 29-year-old Canadian-born artist – known for their use of performance, film and speculative fiction to deconstruct the limits of the body – at the studio they share with their partner and collaborator, Shy One. They make their living as an artist in London, widely recognised for their distinctive approach to questions of identification. In recent years, they have exhibited work at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada, the Hayward Gallery, the Whitechapel Gallery, the 2019 Venice Biennale, Palais de Tokyo, the Serpentine Galleries, the Taipei Contemporary Art Center, Art Basel Hong Kong, the ICA, Block Universe and the Tate Modern, among others.

Queer nightlife in London provided the opportunity to play, a space where ‘weirdos’ could experiment. Having been obsessed with the artifice of Western femininity, Sin sought to burst it open by using drag to pick apart the fantasy image of femininity that dictates gendered social scripts. “If you were assigned female at birth, or you present as feminine now, you’ve been measured against an ideal image of femininity … Growing up, every image of femininity was skinny, white, cookie cutter. I was obsessed with that and old Hollywood versions of it. A lot of my early drag was trying to attain this ‘moving goalpost’ ideal of Western femininity. I was trying to embody and explode this image of white femininity, to say, ‘Look, I can do it and it’s not real.’”

But the fantasy also had very real consequences for how Sin moved through the world, demonstrating further that the body is merely a way to be read, providing safety and disguise for some, and proximity to violence for others. “In a Western context, the way I am sexualised is also racialised. That’s a disgusting feeling. For me, it was eye-opening to be able to become this fantasy embodiment because suddenly people didn’t know what was underneath. People would assume I was a cis white guy and they started treating me differently. I was in clubs and people would move out of my way.” In an increasingly reactionary and hostile environment in which gender binaries are being reinscribed and trans life presented as a threat, Sin’s work helps us understand the fluidity of gender and the elaborate ruse of identity, illustrating how easily the body is able to morph and transform.

The interdiscipliary nature of their work is evidenced by the fact that it can be found in DIY nightclubs (Sin has performed at many queer and lesbian nights as a drag queen), emerging feminist literary festivals such as London’s New Suns festival, as well as immersive live performance pieces in established art contexts – the Venice Biennale, the Tate and Sotheby’s, for example. Sin is a shapeshifter and as their artistic practice has developed, so have their interests. “Recently, I’ve been moving away from trying to be this perfect embodiment of Western femininity. I’ve done that. What do I want to do now? I’ve been exploring the way drag exists in Cantonese opera, reimagining the visual language and aesthetics of what a queer sci-fi Cantonese opera would look and feel like.” Intensely aware of their audience, they refuse to “perform ethnicity” for a white-dominated art world, seeking instead to denaturalise the language of identity, revealing it for what it is, a pattern, a code. In If I had the words to tell you we wouldn’t be here now (2019), an extended performance staged at the Venice Biennale as well as Tapei’s Chi-Wen gallery, Sin lip syncs to their own musings on the limits of linguistic expression (they call language and naming “an act of mastery”).

Sin’s desire to help their audience escape reality is a result of their interest in science fiction as well as their desire to unravel the dominant narratives that define the way we live. “People like Ursula le Guin, Samuel Delany, Octavia Butler … They are the people I always come back to. The most important thing for me is that science fiction can ask the question, ‘What if?’. What if things were different? What if I was different? What if things don’t change? That science fiction can do this and also immerse you in an experience of what it would feel like to live in that world is vital when we’re living in a world where man-made narratives are altering our minds every day in really violent ways.” They consider their practice to be a continuation of a science fiction legacy. This interest led them to edit science fiction zines Dream Babes 1 and 2.0, inviting authors and artists Samuel Delany and Shu Lea Cheang, Xia Jia and Sophia Al-Maria to contribute. Critical science fiction allowed them to develop new ideas, defining the purpose of performance. “These performances where there are costumes and narratives and sound design and lighting design … I’m trying to use every theatrical device at my disposal to try and give you an idea of what it feels like in this world that I want to make and be in.” Sin believes that science fiction can also help us talk about and think through sex. Inspired by the work of director Eric Pussyboy and artist Shu Lea Cheang, whose 2017 film, Fluidø, imagined a post-HIV/AIDS future, Sin sees the potential for science fiction to combat and abolish the biological essentialism that plagues our understandings of gender, nature, pornography and desire.

What’s next? Sin is busy preparing for a performance at the Guggenheim in New York later this year, and is excited about the new direction their work is taking. Whether drag performance, moving image, soundscaping or science fiction storytelling, their work demands to be witnessed. “It becomes incredibly important to understand the process of narrative-building as it exists around us in history, religion, science, the news, and then to write new narratives. Writing speculative fiction is that one extra step, I know that all of this isn’t real. So I’m just going to write the narratives that I want to be in.” They invite us to recognise the narratives that shape our lives, and begin to unravel them.