SIANFAN

BIO

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Sian Fan is an interdisciplinary artist working between Essex and London where she is artist in residence at Somerset House Studios. From 2021-22 she was the Digital Wonderlands artist in residence at the V&A Museum. She is also alumna of Sarabande Foundation where she was in residence from 2020-21. A graduate of the Fine Art Masters course at Central Saint Martins, she was awarded the prestigious Mona Hatoum Scholarship and was nominated for the Nova Award. In 2014 she graduated from the University of Brighton's BA Performance and Visual Art Dance course, where she was awarded the prize for Outstanding Creative Achievement. 

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She has exhibited internationally with institutions including Tate Modern, FACT, and the V&A, as well as producing work with Channel 4, the BBC and Facebook/Meta. 

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ARTIST STATEMENT

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My work combines movement, the female body and technology to explore embodiment, spirituality and human experience in the digital age. Drawing on my background in contemporary and aerial dance I suspend, fragment and augment the body via choreography and digital techniques. I work across mediums, combining the physical and the virtual through sculpture, performance, animation, moving image and virtual & augmented reality. 

 

Coming from mixed heritage (Chinese and British) my practise meditates on my own fragmented sense of identity, exploring what it means to exist in between worlds. Via my work I delve into my complicated connections with my own heritage, reflecting on diaspora, cultural imposter syndrome and the objectification of Asiatic bodies. I am particularly interested in the uneasy synchronicities between Asian and cyborgian bodies; in popularised depictions of Asiatic bodies in anime and video games; and in the thresholds of human identity where one exists as both and neither at the same time.

 

By extension I am fascinated by virtual identities, and in how we construct virtual bodies which exist in hyperspace beyond our physical bodies. I am concerned with the intangible nature of spiritual and metaphysical identity and with being human in our increasingly digitised and hyperconnected world. Through my work I hope to discover new ways for us to coexist with technology.

 

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