What is Already Free
The image arrived as a vision: past and future converging into the vulnerable point of the present—both protected and entrapped by memory and imagination.
This sculpture emerged from the two quotes above and a memory that came to me:
“His wings were moving up and down slowly, fluttering gently like eyelids in deep sleep. The yellow ended in the most vibrant sapphire, veined, and bordered with black lace. There was not one tear or speck of powder out of place. I couldn’t believe my luck! Here was the most magnificent butterfly I’d ever seen. My centerpiece. As big as my hand, he much too big for my killing jar.
I had read somewhere that you could kill a butterfly by squeezing its thorax. I snatched him lightning fast. It was so easy it was if it was meant to be. As I pressed down with my thumb and forefinger, I was overwhelmed with the amount of force I had to exert. Was that his heart pumping, or was it mine? His wings floundered helplessly.
We stared at each other. Him with his compound eyes, sentient, alien, without judgement. I, a young girl feeling the terror of killing. Bile rose, and a sick feeling blossomed across my chest, as if I were the one being squeezed to death.”
“Within the armor is the butterfly and within the butterfly
–
is the signal from another star.”
–Philip K. Dick
“Our earliest loves, like revenants, have a way of coming back in other forms;
or, to paraphrase Wordsworth, the child is mother to the woman.”
—Margaret Atwood
is the signal from another star.”
–Philip K. Dick
“Our earliest loves, like revenants, have a way of coming back in other forms;
or, to paraphrase Wordsworth, the child is mother to the woman.”
—Margaret Atwood
The image arrived as a vision: past and future converging into the vulnerable point of the present—both protected and entrapped by memory and imagination.
This sculpture emerged from the two quotes above and a memory that came to me:
“His wings were moving up and down slowly, fluttering gently like eyelids in deep sleep. The yellow ended in the most vibrant sapphire, veined, and bordered with black lace. There was not one tear or speck of powder out of place. I couldn’t believe my luck! Here was the most magnificent butterfly I’d ever seen. My centerpiece. As big as my hand, he much too big for my killing jar.
I had read somewhere that you could kill a butterfly by squeezing its thorax. I snatched him lightning fast. It was so easy it was if it was meant to be. As I pressed down with my thumb and forefinger, I was overwhelmed with the amount of force I had to exert. Was that his heart pumping, or was it mine? His wings floundered helplessly.
We stared at each other. Him with his compound eyes, sentient, alien, without judgement. I, a young girl feeling the terror of killing. Bile rose, and a sick feeling blossomed across my chest, as if I were the one being squeezed to death.”
The physical work is built from welded steel bars, nails excavated from my 1900s Amsterdam home, blown glass, and two LED rings driven by Arduino. One LED ring emits a slow heartbeat; the other responds directly to the evolving soundscape.
For the sonic layer, I recorded percussive taps, playing on the metal frame, its “teeth” and body, along with meditation instruments. These samples feed a continually generated SuperCollider composition that layers, modulates, and recombines the sounds into a shifting environment to create an atmosphere with peaks and ebbs.
Support: Jorn van Dijk (SuperCollider & Arduino), Rick Haring (recording), Kees Aafjes (Arduino), Rietveld Metal and Glass workshops.
For the sonic layer, I recorded percussive taps, playing on the metal frame, its “teeth” and body, along with meditation instruments. These samples feed a continually generated SuperCollider composition that layers, modulates, and recombines the sounds into a shifting environment to create an atmosphere with peaks and ebbs.
Support: Jorn van Dijk (SuperCollider & Arduino), Rick Haring (recording), Kees Aafjes (Arduino), Rietveld Metal and Glass workshops.
Residual Resonances (in progress)
Residual Resonances is an ongoing work combining projection and sound, creating a temporal interplay where past and future intersect with the present. The spatial sound element brings forward sonic textures that usually slip beneath conscious perception: the hum of appliances, bird calls, mechanical clicks.
The projected imagery originates from scanning a physical sculpture—perhaps a fossil from the future, perhaps space trash—into virtual space. The work explores the transient quality of forms and how they shift, erode, and transform as they move between physical and digital states.
Residual Resonances is an ongoing work combining projection and sound, creating a temporal interplay where past and future intersect with the present. The spatial sound element brings forward sonic textures that usually slip beneath conscious perception: the hum of appliances, bird calls, mechanical clicks.
The projected imagery originates from scanning a physical sculpture—perhaps a fossil from the future, perhaps space trash—into virtual space. The work explores the transient quality of forms and how they shift, erode, and transform as they move between physical and digital states.
Alchemy of Rest
Transformation unfolds in the quiet intervals between visible productivity. Like Napa cabbage surrendering to ancient alchemy, becoming vibrant kimchi in Korean hands or aromatic suan cai through Chinese tradition, we require periods of dormancy to evolve into our most complex, nuanced selves. Fermentation becomes both metaphor and method.
Alchemy of Rest is a work inspired by fermentation and microbial time. The work was created as part of the Access Test Kitchen Workshop, a part of Rietveld Uncut x Stedelijk Museum (2024). The workshop brought twelve artists together around a communal kitchen table, using it as a metaphor to explore accessibility from a disability-centred perspective. I responded by creating “rest stations,” an intimate, sheltered sonic environment where visitors could withdraw, lie down, and listen.
Under the table, the soundscape and an accompanying book of meditations offered a quiet alternate space. Each meditation linked a step in the cabbage preparation process, washing, cutting, salting, massaging, to states of rest and transformation. Through the work, visitors were encouraged to feel, engaging their bodies with the subtle shifts of the sonic space.
Alchemy of Rest is a work inspired by fermentation and microbial time. The work was created as part of the Access Test Kitchen Workshop, a part of Rietveld Uncut x Stedelijk Museum (2024). The workshop brought twelve artists together around a communal kitchen table, using it as a metaphor to explore accessibility from a disability-centred perspective. I responded by creating “rest stations,” an intimate, sheltered sonic environment where visitors could withdraw, lie down, and listen.
Under the table, the soundscape and an accompanying book of meditations offered a quiet alternate space. Each meditation linked a step in the cabbage preparation process, washing, cutting, salting, massaging, to states of rest and transformation. Through the work, visitors were encouraged to feel, engaging their bodies with the subtle shifts of the sonic space.
The sound piece was built from recordings of Napa cabbage preparation: tearing, chopping, salting, squeezing. The sounds start distinct and crisp but gradually blur together, overlapping, intensifying, and morphing, evoking the transformation of fermentation.
Support: Jorn van Dijk (soundscape) and Rick Haring (recording)
Access Test Kitchen collaborators: Staci Bu Shea, Mira Thompson, Kelvin Dijk, Kalli Ioumpa, and KIEM.
Access Test Kitchen collaborators: Staci Bu Shea, Mira Thompson, Kelvin Dijk, Kalli Ioumpa, and KIEM.
I am a multidisciplinary artist working across visual arts, auto-fiction, and speculative futures to explore memory, migration, and intergenerational inheritance. Rooted in a sensitivity to nature, my practice traces shifting boundaries between the organic and the synthetic, weaving together personal and collective narratives.
After the birth of my son in 2021, I transitioned from a background in design and innovation into my art and writing practice. Since fully shifting in 2024, and alongside my studies at the Rietveld Academie, I’ve been developing a practice grounded in experimentation, embodied experience, and the critical use of technology. Increasingly, this includes sonic, performative, and installation-based approaches that activate spatial and sensory dimensions of my work, deepening its exploration of presence, relation, and transformation.
Shauna Jin
hello@shaunajin.nl
Vimeo
EDUCATION
DOGtime, BSc in Art, Theory, and Media
Gerrit Rietveld Academy
2024 - present
PhD in Design for Sustainability
Delft University of Technology
2010-2015
MSc in Industrial Design Engineering
Delft University of Technology
2006-2008
Bachelors in Architecture and Mechanical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2002-2006
SELECTED
EXHIBITIONS
There Are Ways Out (Solo)
The Laughing Heart Festival, Chaumont-devant-Damvillers, FR
2025
Ground Work Residency Exhibition (Group), Cosmos152, Amsterdam, NL
2025
Access Test Kitchen (Group), Stedelijk x Rietveld Academie: Rietveld Uncut. Stedelijk Museum,
2025
RESIDENCIES & FELLOWSHIPS
Ground Work Residency, Amsterdam, NL (self-organised)
2025
Post-Inertia Summer School, Technology and Democracy Track (Online)
2020
Project CLOSER, V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam, NL
2010