Shen Xin: Brine Lake (A New Body)

For their first US museum solo exhibition, Twin Cities–based artist Shen Xin (b. 1990, Chengdu) debuts a new video and sound installation following its 2021 premiere at the Gwangju Biennale in South Korea. Brine Lake (A New Body) (2020) meditates on the intersections between extractive economies, migrant populations, statelessness, and transnational identities.

Set against a backdrop of a fictional iodine recycling factory, the work follows both human and nonhuman protagonists as they converse in multiple languages—Korean, Japanese, and Russian—comingling topics such as ecology, technology, economy, and personal memory. Projected onto five large-scale screens suspended at intervals throughout the gallery space, Brine Lake encourages visitors to become active participants as they move between the work’s overlapping episodes.

Curated by Victoria Sung, associate curator, Visual Arts; and William Hernández Luege, curatorial assistant, Visual Arts.

About the artist
Shen Xin creates moving image installations and performances that empower alternative histories, relations, and potentials between individuals and nation-states. They seek to create affirmative spaces of belonging that embrace polyphonic narratives and identities. 

Shen Xin’s recent solo presentation of exhibitions, performances and screenings include Swiss Institute, New York (forthcoming, 2022), Double Feature (Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 2019), Synthetic Types (Stedelijk Museum, 2019), To Satiate (MadeIn Gallery, Shanghai, 2019), Warm Spell (ICA, London, 2018), half-sung, half-spoken (Serpentine Galleries, London, 2017), and At Home (Surplus Space, Wuhan, 2016). Their group exhibitions include Language is a River (MUMA, Melbourne, 2021), An Impulse to Turn (Inside Out Museum, Beijing, 2020), Sigg Prize (M+ Museum, Hong Kong, 2019), Afterimage (Lisson Gallery, London, 2019), and Songs for Sabotage (New Museum Triennial, New York, 2018). They received the BALTIC Artists’ Award (2017) and held the Rijksakademie residency in Amsterdam (2018–19). Shen Xin practice on Miní Sóta Makhóčhe, the land of the Dakhóta Oyáte, as well as in London, UK.

Shen Xin: Brine Lake (A New Body) is made possible with support from the Edward R. Bazinet Foundation and RBC Wealth Management.