About
Kim Chin is a British ESEA*- Caribbean multidisciplinary artist-designer, independent curator, and community producer. These cultural threads influenced Kim’s curiosity for using storytelling in practices that ground people with their environment and more than human kin.
Through co-creating textile work, printmaking, and public-facing events, Kim’s work celebrates and explores diaspora broadening definitions of “British culture”. Their mission is to amplify intersectional perspectives that are often overlooked or minimised. After following passions as a textile designer in the UK and abroad, the more experience, responsibility, and awareness gained in each new role highlighted the harm that was being caused by the industry she benefited from. The cognitive dissonance was unsustainable and resulted in burnout (chronic mental and physical stress) multiple times, leading to a diagnosis of ADD. Naming the neural wiring type that amplified stress responses was life-changing. It breathed language, resources and courage to face unprocessed grief from personal loss eight years prior. On returning to London in 2019, Kim enrolled at Central Saint Martins to complete an MA in Culture, Criticism and Curation in a post-pandemic age, marking a commitment to repurpose creative problem-solving skills to align better with values. Pulling un/learnings from her many experiences, Kim navigates arts, learning and social spaces to inspire agency, connectivity, and belonging in heart-provoking ways - creating a loop of wisdom from academic theorisation into everyday practice and vice versa.
Kim co-founded ESEA unseen, a year-long duo who used textile waste during their thematic workshops, and was a co-founding member of the Equity Advisory Council (2020-2024), whose aim was to remove barriers within the crafts sector for marginalised makers by ideating, strategising and delivering new ideas that widened opportunities and holding the Crafts Council to account if practices and systems misaligned with their equity and inclusion aims.
Workshops, events and provocations on ESEA liberation have been showcased in collaboration with National Portfolio Organisation (NPO)’s Southbank, Kakilang Arts, and the Museum of the Home in addition to contributing to public events at Autograph ABP, Tate Modern, Camden Chinese Community Centre, and Central St Martins. Further workshops or talks integrating influences of migration, intergenerational and transnational exchange have been held at the Migration Museum, the Crafts Council, the Camden People’s Theatre, The Showroom, Goldsmiths, University of London and Haworth Gallery as part of Conversations in Creativity, Lancashire, during the British Textile Biennial, 2023.
*ESEA = East and Southeast Asian
Get in touch at: