Artist Statement

My work begins with listening to ancestry.

The figures I make have been erased twice: first from history, then from the material record. I search thrift bins and recycling centers for the clothing of people the world moved past — qipaos and work shirts, rebozos and silks, garments from Chinese, Mexican, and diasporic communities, the dress of workers, immigrants, and ancestors, discarded. From what was thrown away, I create Descendants.

I approach ancestry as a living relational force, not a historical subject. I work as a conduit, through ritual, site-based research, and material intuition, translating ancestral presence into form. I deconstruct and reconstruct: cleaning, cutting, stitching, layering, until discarded textiles become them. Standing six to eight feet tall, dense with layered material, the Descendants are simultaneously monumental and fragile. They are rooted in the past, but they do not look like the past. They look like a mythology that hasn't been written yet.

The series began in 2021, during the pandemic, when I was excavating my own family's immigrant journey to the West. Those first figures were sewn from recycled sportswear using quilting and mending techniques — my people, in my hands, made from what was left behind. Working in residency at the Portland Chinatown Museum in 2023, the practice expanded into something larger: the laborers, porters, merchants, and women whose work built Oregon and whose names did not survive it. I returned them as Pioneers, Innovators, Guardians, and Healers. The figures grew taller.

What connects all of it is the act of rewriting. I am not illustrating existing mythology — I am authoring new myths from the fragments of old ones, stitching together oral traditions across cultures, transforming women who were objectified and sacrificed into heroes, pioneers, tiger women who chose their own terms.

I do not recover the past. I reconstruct it from what survived the throwing away.

Bio

Engaging material as archive, ritual, and transformation

I'm a Toronto-born, Portland-based sculptor and installation artist. I grew up training as a gymnast — competing at World Championships twice, falling in front of thousands of people, and getting up and trying again. I didn't make the Olympics. What those years gave me instead was a deep understanding of repetition, failure, and what it takes to keep building something even when you're not sure it will hold.

I came to art through design, spending years working on immersive retail environments in Tokyo, Seoul, and Berlin. The pandemic changed that. After pouring myself into the opening of Nike Rise Seoul — doing the work, not seeing my name on it — I made a decision. Art was my rebellion. For the first time, I called the shots, made what I wanted, and shared what I believed in without running it through a hundred other people.

My first real move in that direction was a residency with GLEAN and Recology, working inside Portland's Northwest Transfer Station. Witnessing the scale of what gets discarded permanently changed how I understand material.

But the practice found its deeper subject in my own ancestry. My family has an ancestral book dating to the 1600s, written in a language I cannot read. I hold its weight and feel the accumulation — generations of DNA, inherited trauma, everything passed forward without a word. At Esalen Institute, after a movement practice, I saw thirty shimmering figures. Descendants. I understood then that I was being called to work as a conduit for ancestral presence. The Descendant Series is where that calling lives.

Precision, technique, and repetition — trained through gymnastics, piano, and shoemaking — run through every stitch of every sculpture I make. I have been in Portland for eight years. My work has been exhibited at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art and the Portland Chinatown Museum. Alongside my studio practice, I designed Team USA's jacket for the 2026 Milan Winter Olympics.

Exhibitions & Residencies

2027

  • A World Within, Lan Su Chinese Garden, Portland, OR (forthcoming) 

2026

  • Lan Su Chinese Garden, Artist Residency, Portland, OR (forthcoming) 
  • GMA Architects Artist Residency, Portland, OR
  • Nike Air Milano Jacket and Team USA uniform, 2026 Olympics, Milan, Italy.

2025

  • Warp Speed, Center for Creative Arts & Culture at PNCA, Portland, OR
  • Just Playin' Around, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at PSU, Portland, OR 
  • Environmental Learning Center Gallery, Recology, San Francisco, CA

2024

  • Coming Home, Revitalizing Old Town, 220 Gallery, Portland, OR 
  • The Dump Show, Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco, California
  • SATIRE, Shaking The Tree Theatre, Portland, OR 
  • Cuts Across: Artists Respond to Lived Intersection, Carnations Contemporary
  • We Wrote This With You in Mind, Inside the Box Gallery, Portland, OR

2023

  • Invisible Hands, Portland Chinatown Museum, Portland, OR
  • Ode to San Francisco, Four Chicken Gallery, San Francisco, CA
  • Glean, Recology, Parallax Art Center, Portland, OR

2022

  • Metaverse Biennale SIKKA Art & Design Festival, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Awards, Publications, & Talks

2025


2024

2023

  • Sustainable Fashion Lecture, Portland State University, Portland, OR
  • Asian American Art Talk, Portland Chinatown Museum, Portland, OR
  • Shed Panel Art Talk - The ReBuilding Center, Portland, OR

2022

  • Divide Magazine, Vol 4
  • Zerowaste Workshop - Danielle Elsener, Portland, OR 

2016 Shoemaking Apprenticeship - Nassier Vies Studio, Toronto, ON 

2015 Titanium Grand Prix winner, Cannes, France

2015 Shoemaking Workshop - Shoe School, Port Townsend, WA

2014 Leather Manipulation - Chicago School of Shoemaking, Chicago, IL 

2005 Gymnastic World Championships, Eindhoven, Netherland

2003 Gymnastic World Championship, Hannover, Germany

Hey!

If you’re interested in collaborating, I’d love to hear from you.

© 2026 Joshua Sin

All Rights Reserved