Sim Chiyin
‹간섭: 심문›, 2018
Interventions: Parachutes, 2018
유리에 피그먼트 프린트, 포일
59.4 × 42cm
Pigment print, foil on glass
59.4 × 42cm
‹간섭: 심문›, 2018
Interventions: Interrogation, 2018
유리에 피그먼트 프린트, 포일
59.4 × 84.1cm
Pigment print, foil on glass
59.4 × 84.1cm
Sim Chiyin’s ongoing research project titled One Day We’ll Understand (2015 – ) examines historiographies of the Malayan Emergency (1948 – 1960) and is informed by a search for answers to her grandfather’s execution during this period. The Malayan Emergency was a guerrilla war between British and Commonwealth troops and the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA), the armed wing of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP). This protracted conflict took place in the jungles, plantations, and villages of the Federation of Malaya. The MNLA fought for the independence of Malaya from the British Empire, designating the conflict as the “Anti-British National Liberation War.” Meanwhile, the British categorized it as an “emergency” to underwrite insurance claims, since London-based companies did not cover costs arising from civil wars. The prints on glass are based on two of the handful of images that Sim found in the British Imperial War Museum’s archives picturing the “communist insurgent.” Merging verso and recto onto the plane of her images, her prints bring to light the annotations that have defined these images, surfacing the idiom of British propaganda that framed this anti-colonial struggle and invested discursive weight on words such as “banditry” and “emergency.”
Presented alongside is a selection of propaganda leaflets from the private collection of Benjamin Seet, compiled over 30 years. It is one of the most comprehensive collections of propaganda leaflets used during World War II and the Malayan Emergency in Southeast Asia. The leaflets, which were dropped over the Malayan jungles, illustrated different racial assumptions using a variety of visual techniques, from collage and comics to photographs of deceased “bandits.” Sim’s work illuminates the complex narratives of this conflict.
Sim Chi Yin is an artist from Singapore whose research-based practice includes photography, moving image, archival interventions and text-based performance, and focuses on history, conflict, memory and extraction. She is currently based between New York and Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include One Day We’ll Understand, Zilberman Gallery Berlin (2021), One Day We’ll Understand, Les Rencontres d’Arles (2021), One Day We’ll Understand, Landskrona Foto Festival, Sweden (2020), One Day We’ll Understand, Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong (2019) and Most People Were Silent, Institute of Contemporary Arts, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore (2018), Fallout, Nobel Peace Museum, Oslo (2017). Her work has also been included in group shows such as Most People Were Silent, Aesthetica Art Prize, York Art Gallery, United Kingdom (2019); UnAuthorised Medium, Framer Framed, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Relics, Jendela (Visual Arts Space) Gallery, Esplanade, Singapore (both 2018); and the Guangzhou Image Triennial ( 2021), the 15th Istanbul Biennial, Turkey (2017). Sim was commissioned as the Nobel Peace Prize photographer in 2017. Chi Yin is represented by Zilberman Gallery in Berlin and Hanart TZ Gallery in Hong Kong. She is also doing a visual practice-based PhD at King’s College London.
Sim Chi Yin, Exhibition view from One Day We’ll Understand, Zilberman, Berlin, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and Zilberman, Istanbul/Berlin. Photo: Chroma.