金 (Metal)

About the Artist

Kien Situ (b.1990) is an architectonic artist whose practice spans sculpture and space. Informed by his diasporic heritage at the juncture of contemporary global cultural theory with ancient Sinospheric philosophy, he explores matter, ruin, distance, numerology, and time in relation to cultural dislocation.

Situ reconfigures structures and space through encounters formed by destabilisation, tension, and hybridity. Drawing from deconstructivist, minimalist, and brutalist spatial methodologies, his work merges ancestral materials with modern techniques. Chinese Mò ink is central to his practice, altered through architectural materials. By displacing and reorienting these elements - while ‘reincarnating’ old works into new forms - he examines the destructive relationality between matter and identity, envisaging the cartography of his practice as an ‘endless, formless ruin.’

Situ has exhibited at Artspace, 4A, Passage, The University of Sydney amongst other local institutions. In 2025, he will be showing at the Australian National University, Bankstown Arts Centre, Nasha Gallery, and undertaking an artist residency at Bundanon. His work belongs to Deloitte’s Corporate Art Collection and various private collections. Alongside this, he has designed numerous exhibitions at AGNSW. In 2024, he was shortlisted for Create NSW’s Artspace Visual Arts Fellowship and Lee Ufan Arles x Maison Guerlain Prix Art & Environment. In 2025, he will be presenting an artwork for the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025: Intelligens for HOME at the Australian Pavilion.

He holds a Bachelor of Architecture (UNSW, 2016) and a Masters of Architecture (USYD, 2025).

Opening Hours

Weekdays 9 am–5 pm; closed on public holidays

The Australian Centre on China in the World acknowledges the ANU School of Art & Design for their support of the exhibition