Turner Prize 2022: Hong Kong exhibition propels performance artist Sin Wai-kin onto shortlist
- ‘It’s Always You’ saw Sin Wai-kin perform in drag within fictional worlds playing members of a boy band and a voluptuous, heavily made-up platinum blonde
- Heather Phillipson, Ingrid Pollard and Veronica Ryan make up the rest of the four-strong shortlist
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The artist Sin Wai-kin has been nominated for the UK’s Turner Prize for contemporary art partly for their exhibition that opened in November 2021 at Hong Kong’s Blindspot Gallery.
Sin, who identifies as non-binary and prefers to be referred to by the pronouns “they” and “their”, is one of four artists commended for their solo exhibitions this year, announced Tate Britain, which organises the award, on Tuesday.
“Drawing on their own experience existing between binary categories, their work realises fictional narratives to describe lived realities of desire, identification and consciousness,” the Tate statement said.
This year’s nominees also include Heather Phillipson, best known in Britain for her artwork displayed in London’s Trafalgar Square of a giant swirl of replica whipped cream, topped with a sculpted cherry, fly and drone.
Titled The End, the work sat for two years from January 2020 on the empty fourth plinth of the world-famous landmark in the centre of the British capital.
Phillipson, who works in video, sculpture and drawing, was nominated for that work and a solo exhibition – “Rupture No 1: Blowtorching the Bitten Peach” – at Tate Britain.
The prize’s jury “applauded the audacious and sophisticated way Phillipson splices absurdity, tragedy and imagination to probe urgent and complex ideas”, the museum said in a statement.
Another contender, Ingrid Pollard, works primarily in photography, but also sculpture, film and sound. She was nominated for her exhibition “Carbon Slowly Turning” in Milton Keynes, central England.
“Pollard’s work questions our relationship with the natural world and interrogates ideas such as Britishness, race and sexuality,” Tate Britain said.
The jury also selected Veronica Ryan, a British sculptor born in Montserrat in the Caribbean, for two UK showcases of her “sculptural objects and installations using containers, compartments, and combinations of natural and fabricated forms”.
Alex Farquharson, Tate Britain’s director and co-chair of the prize jury, said galleries and museums reopening in 2021 after multiple pandemic lockdowns had led to “a terrific 12 months for contemporary British art”.
“Art has provided much-needed enjoyment and escape over the past year, but it has also helped to reconnect us with each other and the world around us, as the practices of the four shortlisted artists variously exemplify,” he said.
The Turner winner – to be announced at an award ceremony in Liverpool, northwest England, in December – will scoop £25,000 (US$32,600), with the other nominees each receiving £10,000.
An exhibition of their works will be held at Tate Liverpool from October 20, 2022 to March 19, 2023.
Over the years, the prize has courted headlines because of installations including an unmade bed and works made from elephant dung and human hair.
In 2019, the four shortlisted artists sent a plea to judges to award the prize to them all jointly, explaining they had formed a collective to show solidarity at a time of global “political crisis”, including Brexit.
Additional reporting by Enid Tsui
