Samson Young

With a distinctive aesthetic where theatricality takes center stage, Samson Young’s work explores the relationship between sound and its cultural politics, weaving together symbolic borders of the past and present. The Muted Situations series offers a new experience of familiar sonic environments: in each work, the less prominent timbres are revealed through a process of silencing certain layers—most often, the primary audible foreground.
The video Muted Situations #2 presents two performers reenacting a centuries-old Chinese tradition. Wearing traditional costumes and executing the choreography, the action unfolds without the percussive music that would typically accompany the performance. In Young’s work, the act of silencing provokes an exercise in reimagination, suppressing dominant voices as a mechanism to highlight what is marginalized—a sensitive narrative imbued with references to identity and tradition, while also addressing contemporary issues such as migration and geopolitical conflicts.

Henrique Menezes