Sim Chi Yin Singapur, 1978
Remnants #27, from ‘One Day We’ll Understand”, 2024
Archival pigment print
61 x 61 cm
Edition of 10 plus 2 artist's proofs
Sim Chi Yin’s Remnants take us on a cinematic journey through traces of hidden histories. The ethereal landscapes she conjures are an unspoken archive of an undeclared war. Evocative of...
Sim Chi Yin’s Remnants take us on a cinematic journey through traces of hidden histories. The ethereal landscapes she conjures are an unspoken archive of an undeclared war. Evocative of the unknown or unknowable, these sites hold fragments of the twelve-year conflict between the British colonial government and the resistance led by the Malayan leftists (from 1948 to 1960).
Sim has sought out some of the unrecorded stories, songs, memories, artefacts and documents of the leftist foot soldiers, creating an assemblage that is an unofficial, alternate archive of that war. In Remnants, she shows unembellished photographs of 32 of the objects she has made still-life studies of from her visits with the old left across southern China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and southern Thailand.