Shen Xin: Brine Lake (A New Body)

November 18, 2021 – July 3, 2022
Walker Art Center

725 Vineland Pl.
Minneapolis, MN

View of the exhibition Shen Xin: Brine Lake (A New Body). Photo: Pierre Ware. Image courtesy of the organizer.

View of the exhibition Shen Xin: Brine Lake (A New Body). Photo: Pierre Ware. Image courtesy of the organizer.

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.