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Sian Fan
Having a background in performance art, Sian Fan thinks about being human in the digital age. Examining how we construct identities and existences in digital spaces that go beyond our physical bodies, Sian is interested in using interactive technologies to create direct connections between the physical and the virtual. Often using florals to represent the spiritual quality of being human, her work feels like an entwinement of a virtual simulation and the natural world. In doing so, she works with the complexities of the human experience in our increasingly digitised and hyperconnected world.
Cure 1, 2022
Edition of 3
(SOLD 1 OF 3)
50w x 70h cm
Giclée print on Fine Art Paper
£ 500.00
View
'My work seeks to discover new ways for us to coexist with technology in our increasingly digitised and hyper-connected world. my work combines movement, the female body and technology to explore embodiment, spirituality and human experience in the digital age. Combining the physical and the virtual through sculpture, performance, animation, moving image and virtual & augmented reality, I work across mediums, to create works that heighten our awareness of the experience of being online'
Drawing from her Chinese-British background, within this exploration of the human experience in the digital age, her work meditates on her own fragmented sense of identity, exploring what it means to exist in-between worlds. In other words, she uses her own heritage to think about the complexities of identity in digital spaces, and in specific, the Asian diaspora, Imposter syndrome and mixed identities. By doing so, she seeks to explore, expose, and expand these thresholds of human identity where one exists as both and neither at the same time.
Cure 4, 2022
Edition of 3
(SOLD 1 OF 3)
50w x 70h cm
Giclée print on Fine Art Paper
£ 500.00
View
In these selected works, expanding on the notion of how in video games, botanicals and florals recur in cyber spaces as having healing properties, Sian uses florals within her work to represent that intangible quality of humanity. For her, the healing properties that flowers have, are tangled in that idea of this idea that florals represent the quality of humanity as a whole, whether that’s the soul, the spirit, the consciousness, chi, that spiritual quality of being human. The selected works are either part of the Cure series or Poison series. The works in the Cure series look at the healing power of florals and the works from the Poison series, as the title reveals, are their antitheses.
Harking back at her heritage, Sian is interested in looking at Asian philosophies in her work, the yin and yang for example. This is reflected in these selected works in the sense that there is this duality; although it’s in opposition, it’s a balance. She explains how it’s it’s a black mirror, a common thread through Sian’s work. In these works, although they’re connected, there is darkness and the light, there is poison and the cure.
Cure 3, 2022
Unframed, Edition of 3
59.4 x 84.1 cm
Giclée print on Fine Art Paper
£ 525.00
View
Poison 3, 2022
Unframed, Edition of 3
59.4 x 84.1 cm
Giclée print on Fine Art Paper
£ 525.00
View
Meshing together the organic and technological, this series explores the relationship between the physical and the virtual in a 2D form. Feeling like a digital simulation, she makes digital materials physical by glitching natural elements. Capturing jagged glitchy motions, looking as if technology is interrupting reality, her work reflects upon the entangled and co-dependent nature of people’s relationship to the online world. Glitches, connoting errors, mystery and the unknowable, appearing in a natural setting feels like the virtual is creeping into reality, heightening our awareness of constantly being online. The technique Sian uses to create these glithch-like renderings of florals is a very laborious practice. She creates these pieces using a process called photogrammetry, which is a method of 3D scanning objects using photography. She starts by taking lots and lots of photos of a flower or botanic, before using photogrammetric software to stitch the images together, creating a 3D model. This 3D file consists of two elements, the shape and form of the model and the texture and colour.
For the Cure and Poison series, she takes this texture file and digitally deconstructs and reassembles it into a new image. She repeats this process, and then takes these new images into video editing software, using digital transitions to morph one image into another. She takes a new still of this moment, where one image becomes another image; where the two begin to seep and mesh together. These meshed stills are then digitally layered to create the final work, which constitutes the culmination of over 100 layers of digital imagery.
Cure 5, 2022
Unframed, Edition of 3
59.4 x 84.1 cm
Giclée print on Fine Art Paper
£ 525.00
View
Poison 5, 2022
Unframed, Edition of 3
59.4 x 84.1 cm
Giclée print on Fine Art Paper
£ 525.00
View
Sian currently undertakes a residency at the V&A museum in London and received the prestigious Mona Hatoum Scholarship for excellence whilst studying at CSM. She has exhibited internationally with venues including Tate Modern, British Council, and the ICA, as well as producing work with the BBC and Google, and has been featured in i-D magazine and The Guardian, and is an alumna of Alexander McQueen’s Sarabande Foundation.
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LDN 2DAY is a virtual group show and will be on view until the 4th of June, 2022.
Artwork photographs courtesy of the artist. Portraits taken by Alina zum Hebel (website/ instagram).
Photography courtesy of the artist.
