Danse Macabre: Sydney Shen

Sydney Shen in Conversation with Xin Wang

Sydney Shen, 'Misery Chip' installation view at Vacancy Gallery, Shanghai, 2021. Courtesy the artist and Vacancy Gallery.

New York–based artist Sydney Shen operates with an eclectic yet peculiar appetite for objects, aesthetics, and narratives that fathom both the depth and the randomness of the human condition. Aptly describing herself as a “regulator of the ultimate void,” Shen relishes creating sculptures and installations—including one in the form of a video game—that might be described as profane, anachronistic, and poetically macabre. Her latest exhibition, Misery Whip at Gallery Vacancy, Shanghai, features finely crafted works that draw on overlapping histories of surgical procedures, punishment, and vernacular taste, particularly those in close proximity to Medieval flagellation devices and illuminated manuscripts. The conversation that follows surveys the terrain and texture of the artist’s creative mind-scape.

XIN WANG: Voracious references and imaginative, myriad connections among disparate objects and subjects are core elements in your practice. I wonder if you struggle with sifting through and distilling what might mesmerize you as you work on specific artworks or exhibitions.

SYDNEY SHEN: It’s definitely difficult to prioritize which ideas are worth following down the rabbit hole. The novelty of something might make it interesting at first, which leads to a hyper-focus, only for me to later realize that I didn’t want to work with it at all. While I was preparing my current exhibition at Gallery Vacancy, I got really into the Pillsbury Doughboy, which didn’t make it into the show. Now, a couple of months later, I can’t imagine why I was so invested in learning about this character.

XW: What intrigued you about the Pillsbury Doughboy? He certainly deviates from the severe and perverse romanticism you usually pursue.

SS: I was browsing eBay, one of my favorite activities, and came across Pillsbury Doughboy figurines in various poses, like reclining on his stomach, supported by elbows. In the same eBay session I found an “unborn” doll in the same pose. I had the idea to buy this antique shaving mirror with a really beautiful stand and place the Pillsbury Doughboy on one side of the mirror, take the mirror out, then position the unborn which would be taken out, baby doll on the other. The Pillsbury Doughboy reminds me of Longaberger baskets because both speak to an iconography of North Americanness...READ MORE