Sin Wai Kin
Man's World

Have you ever felt like you were living in someone else's dream? In Sin Wai Kin's first Norwegian solo presentation, Man’s World, audiences are challenged to consider how reality is shaped by storytelling—not only in what stories are told, but also by who tells them and how.  Through three interconnected film installations, the exhibition reveals narrative-making as a constructive world-building force that is never neutral.

Within this exhibition, guests meet four different characters, all portrayed by the artist: "Wai King," "V Sin," "The Storyteller", and “The Mask”. Visitors first encounter the artwork Essence (Digital Display) (2024), a satirical merchandising display featuring Wai King as the brand ambassador for a conceptual men’s cologne that promises self-realization. Viewers then spy a newly co-commissioned film set in a simulated television studio, wherein a sci-fi sitcom, The Time of Our Lives (2024), plays out before a "live" studio audience. Here, three of the exhibition's characters share a stage to enact comic and subversive scenes ranging from everyday encounters to cosmic contemplations. The final film installation, The Fortress (2024), follows a solitary figure who contemplates the historical, scientific, and social construction of the archetype of “Man” and then splinters into two characters, Wai King and The Mask. Shot in Lahore, Pakistan, the film uses stages of performance and rehearsal to exercise themes of knowledge, power, and identity at the boundary between the human and the inhuman.

The artworks in Man’s World weave together diverse influences, from science fiction and Cantonese opera to Shakespearean soliloquy, to challenge traditional assumptions about politics, time, and reality.

Through Man's World, Sin Wai Kin probes urgent questions: Is reality merely a staged performance? Who gets to set the stage, and to what end? Are our desires, hopes, and fantasies our own, or are they inherited scripts about who we should become? Viewers are invited to look beyond the curtain, beneath layers of makeup, skin, muscle, and costume—to question what lies at the heart of how we perform ourselves.


Sin Wai Kin (b. 1991, Toronto, CA) brings fantasy to life through storytelling in moving image, performance, writing, and print. Drawing on experiences of binary categories, their work realizes alternate worlds to describe lived experiences of desire, identification and consciousness.

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The exhibition is supported by The Fritt Ord Foundation, SpareBank1 SMN Samfunnsutbytte, and Arts and Culture Norway.

Man’s World is organized by Adam Kleinman, and curated by Katrine Elise Agpalza Pedersen with Kleinman.

The artist would like to thank each member of the crew, production, and commissioners involved with the production of The Time of Our Lives, The Fortress, and Essence, for which these works would not have been possible.

Kunsthall Trondheim would like to thank Samantha Wolf (Sin Wai Kin Studio); Therese Kellner, Richard Julin (Accelerator); Summer Guthery (Canal Projects New York); Mimi Chun, Jims Lam, Helena Halim (Blindspot Gallery), and Antonia Marsh (Soft Opening).

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Sin Wai Kin’s new video work The Time of Our Lives (2024) is initiated by Accelerator and co-produced with Kunsthall Trondheim, Canal Projects, and Blindspot Gallery, and supported by Vince Guo. Courtesy of the artist and Blindspot Gallery.

The Time of Our Lives tours:
19.10.24–09.02.25, Accelerator, Stockholm
23.01.25–16.03.25, Kunsthall Trondheim, Trondheim
31.01.25–30.03.25, Canal Projects, New York
22.03.25–03.05.25, Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong

The Fortress (2024) is co-commissioned by the Lahore Biennale Foundation and Forma. Supported by The British Council and Shane Akeroyd. Courtesy of the artist and Blindspot Gallery.

Essence (2024) is commissioned by Soft Opening, supported by The Gallery. Courtesy of the artist and Soft Opening.