“Dreaming the End”, the first solo exhibition in Italy by Sin Wai Kin (Toronto, Canada, 1991), in son exhibition until October 29, 2023 in Rome, at Fondazione Memmo. The pivotal point of the project is the new video work from which the exhibition takes its name, “Dreaming the End” entirely shot in Rome. Constantly poised between reality and the dream dimension, Sin Wai Kin’s poetics is the manifesto of a complexity that eschews categories and means of expression: video, performance, and installations are the languages used to give life to works that mix pop references and personal experiences, allowing an indefinable feeling to emerge, suspended between tenderness and melancholy, irony and drama, familiarity and alienation.
The centerpiece of the exhibition is the video “Dreaming the End”, entirely shoot in Rome: a story that moves between the narrative and real registers, playing with times, spaces, places and references so as to make everything at once familiar and unfamiliar. Obsessions and contradictions are at the heart of the film, a journey somewhere between dreams and oppressive visions taken by a series of enigmatic figures who intersect in the different scenarios imagined by Sin Wai Kin. The cross-cutting approach of different cinematic genres (thriller, noir, fantasy…), with forays into fashion and other areas of popular culture, contributes to the sense of disorientation in “Dreaming the End”, which offers the viewer an experience in which points of reference are continually challenged and overturned. It is through this story-a pastiche of genres, styles, and space-time coordinates-that the film asks a question: where does authenticity end and performance begin? Who decides what is fantasy or reality? For Sin Wai Kin, the possibility of change is fundamental: this work, too, is an invitation to adopt a non-binary consciousness, to dissolve the rigidity of certain patterns and let our experiences cause us to evolve.
Characterized by a strongly fictionalized narrative, in Sin Wai Kin’s artistic projects there is a doubling, sometimes a true multiplication of the characters on stage, almost always played by the artist. This is the case in “Dreaming the End”, an unreleased production entirely conceived for the exhibition at the Fondazione Memmo, where characters meet and move through the narrative space, exchanging and alternating with each other. This cyclical process means that these figures must continually rediscover themselves, becoming aware of themselves in environments and experiences that involve them in a perpetual flux: «I am perceiving myself shaping the words, but I am also perceiving the words shaping me as I speak them» (excerpt from the film text).
The fluidity of bodies and perspectives is highlighted by the choice to show the video in a loop, so as to create a story that is told and renewed through repetition, evolving and changing depending on who is telling it and who is listening to it: «Everytime I hear the story it changes a little. Everytime the story is embodied it changes a little…» (excerpt from the film text).
The strong psychological connotation of the characters is fueled by the locations that serve as the backdrop for Dreaming the End. The movie can count on fascinating settings, among the interiors of Palazzo Ruspoli, the gardens of Villa Medici and the spaces of the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana: iconic contexts that amplify the sense of wonder of Sin Wai Kin’s work, creating an unprecedented bridge between Rome’s millennial history and the artist’s emphasis on the power of storytelling. Sin Wai Kin’s body, as well as that of the city, are constantly evolving, able to unite past histories and potential futures, crossing different states and phases.
In addition to the film, the spaces of the Memmo Foundation will be populated by the characters of “Dreaming the End” and their stages of transformation. Busts and wigs will be placed in different spaces, but in dialogue with each other, so as to create a continuous exchange; these elements will be accompanied by a series of make-up wipes with traces of the make-up of the different characters played by Sin Wai Kin: these are to all intents and purposes shrouds that become paintings containing landscapes and cosmologies of a changing identity that leaves signs of an endless process. The exhibition is curated by Alessio Antoniolli. Fondazione Memmo is located in Via Fontanella Borghese 56/b.
