Trying to Read Between the Lines
Samuel Xun’s AMSR, ‘‘I’m Exhausted, Where is He’
By Sean Wang
This is a writer's response to Samuel Xun’s AMSR. AMSR is an Art & Market project featuring digital and physical small rooms showcasing the practices of emerging artists and writers. For more information, click here.
When Samuel says that he is “very self-aware”, I am inclined to believe him. He knows that his work is not for everyone, nor is it meant to be. At its core, his work expresses queer heartbreak and disappointment, albeit in glitter ribbon, sequins and penises. It straddles the boundary between playful and contemplative with a campy disregard for high or low art. However, what intrigues me most is another tension that permeates his work even more deeply. How do public displays of art align themselves with expressions of personal suffering?
Samuel Xun, detail of ‘Old Habits Cry Hard’, 2022, wall paint, glitter ribbon, and polyvinyl acetate wood glue on wood base, 70 x 70 x 10cm. Image courtesy of the artist.
The deep personal significance of his work can be seen in its wistfully meditative titles like ‘Maybe That’s What It’s Supposed to Feel Like’ and ‘Everything Reminds Me of Him’. What you do not expect is the way these seemingly insular moments of reflection fill the room with an overwhelming presence. These sculptural pieces command your attention. Their lavish layers of glitter catch the light and hold it, drawing your eye to the hypnotic repetition of stripes. While the ruffles of glitter ribbon convey a comforting softness, the gritty sparkles of glitter give it a heightened sense of theatricality. You do not know if you should laugh or cry. Maybe a bit of both.
What stood out to me was the incredible sense of restraint present in his work. Perhaps a sign of his background in fashion, the glitter ribbons are attached to wood and canvas in symmetrical patterns and perfectly circular motifs. They remain strictly within the boundaries of his sculpture, tightly wrapped around solid forms. This heavy control is present in our conversation as well. He acknowledges that there are things that he is not comfortable sharing through his work. “Just because someone asked me to do a queer show doesn’t mean I’m suddenly going to go boomz”, he quips. Instead, he still undergoes an “internal vetting”, one that involves “reading the room or looking at a brief”. Even when he acknowledges his lack of a formal art background or identifies his humour as a sort of “coping mechanism”, I cannot shake the feeling that these moments of vulnerability are presented to us rather than revealed to us.
Samuel Xun, ‘Everything Reminds Me of Him’, 2021, acrylic paint, glitter ribbon, & polyvinyl acetate glue on stretched canvas, 110 x 110 x 3cm. Image courtesy of the artist.
In light of this, it becomes easier to understand his desire to focus on his own experiences. In a culture where “everyone is so sensitive nowadays”, the personal is one of the last few spaces free from public opinion. No one can tell you how you feel, or something along those lines. He is adamant that he does not speak for anyone else, especially not for the entirety of Singapore’s queer community or queerness in general. Recognising the diversity in Singapore’s queer community, he stresses, “I’m more focused on sharing my own experiences because that is the most accurate thing I can do”.
For Samuel, what comforts him are the moments when others outside his closest friends (which he calls his “tribe”) can relate to his work and share in the same emotions as him. As he recounts conversations in galleries and the thrill of others just “getting it”, it seems striking to me that a person so invested in expressing the singularity of his personal experiences finds solace in the reactions of others. Perhaps it is precisely because of this deeply personal source of inspiration that moments of communion become so special.
He acknowledges the difficulty that something personal is now in a very public domain. This frightening process of self-exposure also finds a parallel in his artmaking process. The simple geometric shapes disguise hours of labour spent on sewing glitter ribbons together. As he coyly notes, being exposed to glue fumes for extended periods of time cannot be a good thing. He reckons that his lungs are filled with glitter by now. Apart from their obvious associations with femininity and queerness (which he also critiques), he chooses his materials based on their artistic potential as well. “I get bored very easily”, Samuel explains. This need for exploration and artistic stimulation is what drew him to glitter ribbon’s scalability and buildability. Originally a humble material he had bought too much of for a fashion project, it had become something that he could see himself doing for a decent while.
When asked about what he would do with limitless time and resources, you can see his eyes light up. There is a joyful glee as he entertains the idea of five assistants and an air-conditioned studio. In a manner typical of his wit, these seemingly flippant ideas give way to more considered reflections on artmaking. To him, playing with scale is not only about spectacle, it is also about emotional impact. He expresses this perfectly: “When you see a large, giant wall of red you think ‘I’m angry’. When you see a little piece of red you think ‘maybe he’s angry?’”.
Samuel Xun, ‘I Hate You THVIS Much’, 2022, acrylic paint, glitter ribbon, and polyvinyl acetate glue on canvas, 6 canvases: 23 x 31 x 3cm each. Image courtesy of the artist.
While he seems excited to make his work bigger and bolder, what remains to be seen is how it will develop. As his work attracts more attention, it has also intensified the tension between what is personal and what is public. Students have approached him as one of Singapore’s few queer expressive artists and making more connections also necessarily involves greater scrutiny. In this increasingly crowded arena of competing interests, I wonder if his self-awareness might stand in the way of personal authenticity.
“I admire Samuel’s ability to navigate personal experiences and aesthetic concepts with cheekiness, but it is something I find much harder to write about. By erasing words from my original journalistic article, I found the process of obscuration and intentional selection quite like Samuel’s approach to art. ”
I admire Samuel’s ability to navigate personal experiences and aesthetic concepts with cheekiness, but it is something I find much harder to write about. By erasing words from my original journalistic article, I found the process of obscuration and intentional selection quite like Samuel’s approach to art. The fragments come from peeling away the formal structure of sentences — an attempt at getting to the heart of the matter. There is the sense that something has happened and you are witness only to its outcome. However, there is still enough space for your own experiences to fill in the blanks, letting your own words resonate with what has been presented.
For more written responses to AMSR, click here.
About the writer
Sean Wang is a prospective English major waiting to start university. When he’s not reading, writing or editing, he spends his time searching for the best matcha lattes. Originally a notes app poet, he is now exploring notes app flash fiction and essays. His writing has appeared in ‘Rattle’, ‘Capsule Stories’, ‘Dismantle’ and others. He is interested in the articulation of suffering and the mythologisation of the personal.
