Sim Chi Yin Singapur, 1978
Ah Ma, 2024
20 archival pigment prints on rice paper
29.5 x 21 cm (each), 64 x 320 cm in total
Family photos on archival table, artist’s collection Schöneberg, Berlin, 2021/2024 Bornholmer Straße, Berlin, 2024 Site specific participatory installation, postcards * Sim Chi Yin tells the story of Loo Ngan Yue,...
Family photos on archival table, artist’s collection
Schöneberg, Berlin, 2021/2024
Bornholmer Straße, Berlin, 2024
Site specific participatory installation, postcards
*
Sim Chi Yin tells the story of Loo Ngan Yue, her grandmother, who was made a widow by Britain’s violent suppression of anti-colonial forces in Malaya – a conflict that lasted twelve years and later served as a template for Western counter-insurgency campaigns both historical and contem- porary. Sim’s paternal grandfather, a journalist and left-wing intellectual, was – along with many other Socialists and their sympathetisers – impri- soned by the British and deported to China, where he was then executed by the anti-communist Nationalist Army (Kuomintang). Sim juxtaposes mo- ments of leisure with oral histories of her family‘s inter-generational trau- ma, using photographic means to create a cinematic experience. Against the background of the “Malayan Emergency” (1948–1960), Sim draws a picture of fear, loss, flashes of joy as well as familial and historical amne- sia – and therewith points to the unhealed wounds of the Cold War, which deepened the cleft between different segments of the population and led to enduring conflicts, whose repercussions we continue to feel today.
Schöneberg, Berlin, 2021/2024
Bornholmer Straße, Berlin, 2024
Site specific participatory installation, postcards
*
Sim Chi Yin tells the story of Loo Ngan Yue, her grandmother, who was made a widow by Britain’s violent suppression of anti-colonial forces in Malaya – a conflict that lasted twelve years and later served as a template for Western counter-insurgency campaigns both historical and contem- porary. Sim’s paternal grandfather, a journalist and left-wing intellectual, was – along with many other Socialists and their sympathetisers – impri- soned by the British and deported to China, where he was then executed by the anti-communist Nationalist Army (Kuomintang). Sim juxtaposes mo- ments of leisure with oral histories of her family‘s inter-generational trau- ma, using photographic means to create a cinematic experience. Against the background of the “Malayan Emergency” (1948–1960), Sim draws a picture of fear, loss, flashes of joy as well as familial and historical amne- sia – and therewith points to the unhealed wounds of the Cold War, which deepened the cleft between different segments of the population and led to enduring conflicts, whose repercussions we continue to feel today.