Timur Si-Qin
b. 1984, Berlin, Germany
Lives and works in New York, USA
Rock Dome Scallop Sunset, 2024
Timur Si-Qin’s interests in cultural evolution, cognitive science, and philosophy converge in a new kind of environmental art that challenges common dualisms like nature vs. culture and human vs. non-human. Working across various media including 3D-printed sculptures, lightboxes, and virtual reality, Si-Qin imagines new spiritual protocols in the face of ecological crisis.
Timur Si-Qin is a Berlin-based artist whose work reimagines spirituality and the human relationship to the material world in the context of ecological collapse and technological saturation. Raised between the American Southwest and Berlin, Si-Qin’s diverse cultural background, including German, Mongolian-Chinese, and San Carlos Apache heritage, deeply informs his practice. His work draws from a broad spectrum of influences, combining landscape, ritual, and philosophical hybridity into a unique visual language.
Drawing from disciplines like religious anthropology, marketing psychology, and new materialist theory, Si-Qin frames spirituality as a kind of cultural software—a system capable of influencing behavior and enacting political change.
Si-Qin’s long-term conceptual project New Peace explores a contemporary, post-secular spirituality that challenges traditional distinctions between the natural and cultural, the human and non-human, and the organic and synthetic. Through hyperreal renderings, 3D-printed sculptures, and immersive installations, he builds ecosystems of image and matter that invite viewers into an evolving cosmology. These environments do not offer resolution but instead provoke reflection on how meaning is generated through systems, circulation, and interrelation.
Drawing inspiration from branding, evolutionary theory, and theology, New Peace proposes a vision of ecological and spiritual interconnectedness. Si-Qin’s installations recast the viewer as both witness and participant, urging an understanding of the fragile networks that sustain life. His work acts as a meditation on the ways in which humanity, nature, and technology are intertwined, and the spiritual implications of these entanglements.
Recent solo exhibitions include Magician Space, Beijing (2024); Société, Berlin (2023); Kunsthalle Winterthur (2023); von ammon co., Washington D.C. (2020); Magician Space, Beijing (2018); Spazio Maiocchi, Milan (2018); and Art Basel Hong Kong (2018). He has also participated in group shows at the Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin (2023); Kunsthalle Winterthur (2023); Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou (2023); Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden (2022); and The High Line, New York (2018), among others. In 2022, his large-scale installation Sacred Footprint was commissioned by Meta for permanent display at the James A. Farley Building in New York.
He has participated in international biennials, including the 9th Berlin Biennale, the Diriyah Biennale, and the Bangkok Art Biennale. Si-Qin’s work is held in major public collections, including Moderna Museet, Stockholm; ICA Miami; the Julia Stoschek Collection; Sammlung des Bundes, Bonn; and the Zabludowicz Collection.
Drawing from disciplines like religious anthropology, marketing psychology, and new materialist theory, Si-Qin frames spirituality as a kind of cultural software—a system capable of influencing behavior and enacting political change.
Si-Qin’s long-term conceptual project New Peace explores a contemporary, post-secular spirituality that challenges traditional distinctions between the natural and cultural, the human and non-human, and the organic and synthetic. Through hyperreal renderings, 3D-printed sculptures, and immersive installations, he builds ecosystems of image and matter that invite viewers into an evolving cosmology. These environments do not offer resolution but instead provoke reflection on how meaning is generated through systems, circulation, and interrelation.
Drawing inspiration from branding, evolutionary theory, and theology, New Peace proposes a vision of ecological and spiritual interconnectedness. Si-Qin’s installations recast the viewer as both witness and participant, urging an understanding of the fragile networks that sustain life. His work acts as a meditation on the ways in which humanity, nature, and technology are intertwined, and the spiritual implications of these entanglements.
Recent solo exhibitions include Magician Space, Beijing (2024); Société, Berlin (2023); Kunsthalle Winterthur (2023); von ammon co., Washington D.C. (2020); Magician Space, Beijing (2018); Spazio Maiocchi, Milan (2018); and Art Basel Hong Kong (2018). He has also participated in group shows at the Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin (2023); Kunsthalle Winterthur (2023); Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou (2023); Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden (2022); and The High Line, New York (2018), among others. In 2022, his large-scale installation Sacred Footprint was commissioned by Meta for permanent display at the James A. Farley Building in New York.
He has participated in international biennials, including the 9th Berlin Biennale, the Diriyah Biennale, and the Bangkok Art Biennale. Si-Qin’s work is held in major public collections, including Moderna Museet, Stockholm; ICA Miami; the Julia Stoschek Collection; Sammlung des Bundes, Bonn; and the Zabludowicz Collection.
Featured Works
Untouchable Beauty 5, 2024
Embedded Kora, 2024
Campaign of a New Protocol, part IV (Danxia/Chinle simulation Night 1), A,B, 2018
Campaign of a New Protocol, part IV (Danxia/Chinle simulation Night 1), A,B, 2018
NP Contingency Altar, 2018
Selected Exhibitions
Land of the Lustrous
Apr 23 – Sep 8, 2019
UCCA Dune, Beidaihe, China
UCCA Dune, Beidaihe, China
Ecotone Dawn
Jul 9 – Sep 17, 2023
Kunsthalle Winterthur, Switzerland
Kunsthalle Winterthur, Switzerland
Campaign for A New Protocol, Part I, Société
Mar 22 – Apr 26, 2018
Berlin, Germany
East, South, West, North
Nov 23 – Mar 9, 2019
Beijing, China
Beijing, China
Selected Press
Selected Public Projects
Forgiving Change
The High Line, New York, 2018-2019, curated by Cecilia Alemani and Melanie Kress.
Aluminum casts of a burned tree branch from Pepperwood Preserve, which was the site of one of the many forest fires that crossed the west coast of North America in 2017.
Forgiving Change
Forgiving Change 2
Beijing, 2018
Publications
A New Protocol, 2018
During Art Basel Hong Kong, Si-Qin launched a new book published in collaboration with Kaleidoscope Media. A New Protocol outlines the core tenets of New Peace as well as making a case for the urgency of it’s message. Si-Qin elaborates on the conceptual foundations of New Peace in the evolution of religion, science, and philosophy as well as its practical applicability to life today. A collection of his intricately rendered landscapes serve as visual guides for the artist’s presentation of what makes New Peace a spiritual framework for the world of the contemporary and the future.
Edition of 1000
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Timur Si-Qin, Familienfotos at Konfuzius-Institut an der Freien Universität Berlin in March 2017.
Design: Alicja Ewertowska, Timur Si-Qin
Transformers, 2017
Photography: Uli Holz, Sebastian Schobbert
Design: Eric Wrenn Office, New York
Typeface: Linotype Helvetica Neue
Paper: Favini Bindakote, Arctic Matt
Production: Printmanagement Plitt, Oberhausen
Special thanks: Stephan Jansen
Edition of 500