Weng San Sit

I am an artist who works primarily with still and moving images, complementing them with text, archival materials, and other media as the project dictates. My practice attempts to investigate and disrupt systems and power structures that create the dissonance between inattentive, homogeneous representations of marginalized bodies versus the reality of complex and multi-faceted identities; often the foundation and reinforcer of deeply entrenched inequalities.

My projects have focused on ways in which bodies that are colonized, colored, fat, differently-abled, aging, economically disfranchised and/or gendered exist with complexities that defy definition, and have always been sites of resistance and resilience. Often by providing a space to see things as they are, I attempt to open up questions and challenge these mythologies through the continuous search for what Foucault calls the ‘Third Space’, where meanings and symbols cease to exist in fixity, and can be appropriated, translated, rehistoricized, and read anew.

My recent work is inspired by my experience of having cancer and managing the self-effects of treatment that includes surgical menopause and lymphedema. NADC grant allowed me to work on Routines, which explores routines that women-identified folks have incorporated in our lives as our bodies go through transformation or challenges, visible or not. The aim of the project is to show the routines, self-care and challenges in their complexities; resilience, vulnerabilities, humor, banality, tedium and frustrations, countering the mythologies often associated with illnesses, disabilities, aging, motherhood, and gender transitioning. The grant helped me with studio rental and allowed me to purchase a zoom recorder for high quality sound recordings for both ambient and interview audio. Not only that, Beth Stoffmacher, the Arts Specialist at National Arts and Disability Center helped me to reach out to the NADC community and I was able to connect with and filmed other recipients of the grant. The work is ongoing but I have already received a lot of acknowledgements from various communities and many had reached out to speak about how they personally relate to the project. I am looking forward to meeting more inspiring women for the project. If you are interested to participate, please email me at san@wengsan.com and my website is www.wengsan.com