Sin Wai Kin’s series "Portraits" renders time, the core of medium of film, motionless in a digitized suspended moment. The still life of the portraits transforms into a tableaux vivant marked by a post-cinematic break with film’s index, situating the works closer to painting than moving images.

Through world building the artist inhabits and reenacts themselves, switching between portraits by Leonardo Da Vinci, Frida Kahlo, Man Ray and Caravaggio. A counterpoint to the appropriation of the Western Canon, they also employ Ming Dynasty artist Lu Zhi’s painting "Dreaming of a Butterfly". The portraits double as performance art and that draws on Cantonese Opera, creating a third space where cultural contact becomes hybrid, where figuration is masked.