Timur Si-Qin’s interests in the evolution of culture, the dynamics of cognition and contemporary philosophy weave together to create a new kind of environmental art.
Taking form through diverse media, installations of 3D printed sculptures, light-boxes, websites, texts, and virtual reality, Si-Qin’s work often challenges common notions of the organic vs the synthetic, the natural vs the cultural, the human vs non-human and other dualisms at the heart of western consciousness.
Si-Qin’s long-term meta-project is the proposal of a new secular faith in the face of climate change, global pandemics and biodiversity collapse, called New Peace. Through New Peace, individual works aggregate into a hyper-distributed, branded ecosystem of signifiers. Drawing from disparate disciplines like the anthropology of religion, marketing psychology, and new materialist philosophy, Si-Qin regards spiritualities as cultural softwares, capable of deep behavioural and political intervention. New Peace is thus a new protocol for the necessary renegotiation of our conceptual and spiritual relationship with the non-human. New Peace is an artwork, a church, a brand and a memetic machine.
Si-Qin’s (b. 1984, Germany) recent exhibitions include the first Diriyah Biennial, Riyadh; Von Ammon Co., Washington D.C.; Riga Biennial of Contemporary Art 2; the 2019 Asian Art Biennale; the 5th Ural Industrial Biennale of Contemporary Art; UCCA, Beideihe; Spazio Maiocchi, Milan; The Highline, NY; and Magician Space, Beijing.