August 17 – September 12, 2026
SUM gallery is pleased to welcome photo-based mixed media artist Yin Mei as our 2026 SUM gallery artist-in-residence (SUM-AiR). From now until September 12 Yin will be taking over the gallery space to work on Conversations with ■■■■■■ (2026), an installation photo project centered around meeting trans members of the community and interviewing them on their experience existing in trans bodies.
This exploration is kept optionally private through the tools of censorship: black bar, redaction, and omission. The participant will have full autonomy to choose what parts will be seen by the public and what will be hidden. The resulting interaction will be made into a physical art installation and be shown in an exhibition at SUM gallery. This installation project aims to allow trans people the agency and power over the presentation of their own stories and the privilege of anonymity where the demand of vulnerability and ‘queer joy’ is not required to be shared and instead kept personal.
Yin Mei (She/Her) (b. 2002, Xi’an, China) is a photo-based mixed-media artist working with photography, digital media, archive, typography, and poetry. Her practice is centred on the exploration of queer Chinese trans identities, trans-fem experiences, and generational trauma in context with the sinophone diaspora. Through both digital and physical manipulation and intervention, she examines how identity is shaped, oppressed, and empowered through cultural histories. Yin Mei creates work that exists in limbo and uncertainty, where tradition and memory are liminal and the past drapes over the present. Her practice is based on reclamation, resistance, and reimagination–taking space from places that oppress. She received her BFA at the University of British Columbia in 2024 and is currently practicing as an emerging artist in the stolen and traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, “Vancouver, BC.”