ART BASEL HONG KONG

Shin Min’s work interrogates the realities faced by female laborers in low-wage, high-intensity service jobs. Drawing from her own experiences working at multinational fast-food chains and cafes for survival, she crafts figures of female workers; clad in uniforms and black ribbon hairnets—using discarded potato fry packaging. Paper has always been her primary medium, layered and painted over in repetitive motions to mirror the surveillance and controlled identities imposed on workers. The exaggerated postures and furious expressions of her paper sculptures critique societal inequities that oppress women and marginalized groups. The artist describes herself less as a creator and more as a shaman: her sculptures, shaped like human talismans, embed prayers or wishes for viewers to evade life’s dangers. These incantations materialise through the piercing gazes of her works.

The ‘Usual Suspect’ series, debuting at Art Basel Hong Kong 2025, begins with the question, ‘Why do we find hair disgusting?’ It focuses on workers’ hair, systematically policed in the name of hygiene. Strands of hair in food or products provoke visceral disgust, forcing service workers to maintain immaculate appearances. Female laborers, in particular, are mandated to wear hairnets and subjected to strict grooming rules. Through these constraints, Shin Min exposes the ‘femininity’ demanded of women workers and their subjugated social status. Alongside this series, Semi(世美)—named after the artist’s nickname during her time as a Starbucks barista—will be exhibited. Semi means ‘half’ in English and ‘beautiful being of the world’ in Chinese characters. It represents the female workers in South Korea who are neither respected as women nor as workers. The series interrogates the performative nature of service labor while offering a potent self-portrait rooted in her experiences. At both Art Basel Hong Kong and her upcoming solo show, Shin Min uses ‘hair’ as a gateway to dissect intertwined issues of labor, gender, and class. Her uniformed figures, each bearing intense gazes, confront viewers with emotions ranging from empathy to sorrow and rage.