In the whirlwind of advertisements we see every day, one captures our attention. We see an orange-haired subject staring wistfully off into the distance. Below them, a gleaming glass bottle is labelled “Essence.” The tagline – “your true self awaits” – hovers above their head. It’s a striking campaign that promises self-realisation, achieved simply by buying the fragrance. This project isn’t the work of a Chanel or Calvin Klein marketing team. Instead, it’s a piece from award-winning visual artist Sin Wai Kin (b. 1991). Their multidisciplinary practice – spanning performance, moving image and print – uses speculative fiction to question the idealised image and the collective gaze. Here, they address fantasies sold by brands that suggest happiness and fulfilment can be bought. This summer, Essence will cover billboards across the UK as part of The Gallery, which is the UK’s largest public exhibition. Audiences will also get to see another dimension to the piece at Soft Opening’s exhibition at Paul Soto, Los Angeles, which includes wall-based posters alongside a film and sculpture. We interviewed Wai Kin to learn more about this project, their recent Jarman award nominated film Dreaming the End and Wai King – the face of this fantastical cologne.
A: The Gallery places art in spaces we typically expect to see adverts – from billboards to bus stop screens – which further emphasises how Essence blurs the line between art and advertising. Why did you choose to present this piece in the style of a perfume campaign?
SWK: One binary I’m thinking about is performance and authenticity. Essence acts as an object and its marketing campaign, and mimics how desire is produced within consumer capitalism. The film is produced as a commercial for the product which exists on screens as a digital display and will appear as an ad break in a work structured as a TV show coming out this year. The posters are framed as a 6 sheet in lock boxes that you might see outside on the street. The images are also part of The Gallery which presented an opportunity for the work to actually occupy the space of advertising across the UK on billboards, digital signage, bus stops, etc, for the summer. The product itself is basically a prop for an advertising campaign for the prop for the advertising campaign for the prop for the advertising campaign… I’ve been working a lot in cycles recently and in this case I wanted to draw attention to the way that, in order to sell objects, capitalism produces anxiety within the consumer using fantasy ideals. These then become naturalised, which creates the need for even more unobtainable ideals.
A: This project stars your character Wai King, who embodies unbridled masculinity. Could you tell us more about this character?
SWK: Wai King is a drag king. I use him to play with masculinity – to try it on in different ways and see what it does. A cologne campaign featuring Wai King made sense because cologne advertisements sell the idea of masculinity. Fragrance ads rarely even hint at what the thing actually smells like, it’s easier to sell the idea of who you will become once you have the product.
A: The tagline for Essence is “your true self awaits.” How do these words resonate with the wider themes of this project?
SWK: The tagline for Essence points to how we are sold an idea that there is a true self to be or uncover. The idea of truth in identity is often weaponised to make us think some people are more real than others. More and more we are realising, in culture, in science, that there is no objective truth to uncover, and that reality is what we agree that it is.
A: What do you want audiences to take away from this project?
SWK: I want people to notice how our relationships to our bodies – and our bodies relationships to each other and the world – are objectified and sold back to us, and how this services current socio-political systems.
A: Science fiction is a major influence on your practice. What draws you to this genre? Was there a specific book or film that inspired Essence?
SWK: Fragrance campaigns inspired Essence, though they are also fantasies! I’m interested in how science fiction often uses fantasy to point out how real things are also constructed.
A: Congratulations on being nominated for the 2024 Jarman award! Could you tell us more about your piece, Dreaming the End?
SWK: Dreaming the End is a film about language and storytelling and how they not only represent but also create reality. It was shot in Rome, a city rich in storytelling. The film follows two characters, The Storyteller and Change, as they move through alternate worlds and versions of themselves whilst embodying and performing narratives.
A: The costumes in Dreaming the End draw inspiration from fashion designers Cinzia Ruggeri and Robert Wun. Why did you choose these designers? What role does clothing play in this piece?
SWK: Cinzia Ruggeri’s stairs motif connected nicely to the way architecture acts in the film, she was conceptual in her designs which were also full of absurdities. Robert Wun’s couture is similarly heavy in concept and storytelling. Recently he presented a collection at Paris’ Haute Couture week called Time, in which he depicted the changing seasons as well as each layer of the human body – from skin to flesh to bones to soul.
A: What projects can we look forward to seeing from you in the future?
SWK: This year I will release two more film works also featuring Wai King. The Fortress will premiere as part of The Lahore Biennale, which was shot on location across Lahore Fort and Alfalah Theatre. Here, Wai King rehearses and attempts to perform a role that fails in itself, and falls apart because of it. This project also features a new character. Secondly, I’m sharing The Time of Our Lives, a science fiction sitcom using relative time in physics as a metaphor for our individual experiences of reality. The work will open at Accelerator in Stockholm in October, then travel to Kunstall Trondheim in Trondheim and Canal Projects in New York in January, before going to Blindspot Gallery in Hong Kong in March.
The Gallery, A Real Woman | Until 12 August
Soft Opening at Paul Soto, Essence | Until 17 August
Image Credits:
- Sin Wai Kin, Dreaming the End (film still), 2023 © the artist. Commissioned by Fondazione Memmo, Rome. Produced by Mira Productions. Courtesy the artist.
- Essence (2024) by Sin Wai Kin. The Gallery, Season 4, 2024. Produced by Artichoke. Portrait.
- Sin Wai Kin, The Breaking Story, 2022. Commissioned by Sunpride Foundation and Tai Kwun Contemporary for Myth Makers (24 Dec 2022–10 Apr 2023), Tai Kwun, Hong Kong.