Multi-disciplinary artist Samson Young works in sound, performance, video, and installation. In 2017 he represented Hong Kong with a solo project titled Songs for Disaster Relief at the 57th Venice Biennale. He was the recipient of the BMW Art Journey Award, a Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction in Sound Art and Digital Music, and in 2020 he was awarded the inaugural Uli Sigg Prize.
He has exhibited at venues such as the Guggenheim Museum, New York; Gropius Bau, Berlin; Performa 19, New York; Biennale of Sydney; Shanghai Biennale; National Museum of Art, Osaka; National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; Ars Electronica, Linz; and Documenta 14: documenta radio, among others. Recent solo projects include: the De Appel, Amsterdam; Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf; Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh; SMART Museum, Chicago; Centre for Contemporary Chinese Art, Manchester; M+ Pavilion, Hong Kong; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Ryosoku-in at the Kenninji Temple, Kyoto; Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne; and Jameel Art Centre, Dubai, among others.
Samson Young studied music, philosophy and gender studies. He was Hong Kong Sinfonietta’s Artist Associate in 2008, and graduated with a Ph.D. in Music Composition from Princeton University in 2013.
Although I appreciate the galleries ability to recontextualalise and present art in a ’neutral’ environment, I still am not a big fan of gallery art, especially in the case of a lot of modern art.
I find the gallery space to be quite alienating, not only to me as an individual, but culturally in its abstraction and sterility, as well as its surrounding culture and industry