endurance

In the face of a global climate disaster, it is often artists who see beyond the initial fear and chaos, and who dare to imagine not just what is, but what could be. One such visionary is Sharon Chin—an artist, curator, activist, and Cycle 3 CAREC Fellow based in Malaysia.

Originally from Petaling Jaya, Sharon studied in Melbourne before settling in Port Dickson in 2011 with her partner, writer and game designer, Zedeck Siew. Together, they care for Zedeck's childhood home, cultivating a garden rooted in memory and sustainability.

Deeply shaped by place and community, Sharon's recent years have seen a turn toward printmaking and grassroots environmental advocacy. The pandemic deepened her connection to the local landscape—especially mangroves trees that have taught her endurance—and propelled her into collective organizing against pollution from a nearby oil refinery. Through it all, Sharon continues to craft work that blurs the lines between personal, political, and poetic, always grounded in care for the world around her.

Below she speaks with Val Dechev, Prince Claus Fund Communications Coordinator, about art, activism, and the impact of the CAREC Fellows Award, the Fund's interdisciplinary programme with a focus on climate justice and the connection between the climate crisis and the social, racial, and environmental issues in which it is entangled.

In your newsletter Smoke Signals, you mention how your neighbourhood made you an activist, could you elaborate?

My house is 200 meters from an oil refinery. It was built by Shell in the 1960s, then taken over by a China multinational, which restarted operations in 2018. Our neighbourhood has faced increasing levels of noise, smoke and gas flaring ever since.

I became an activist by talking to my neighbors: Hey, are you smelling that gas? Is the noise keeping you awake too? If the refinery hadn’t started polluting, maybe I wouldn’t have gotten to know my neighborhood. Now we have over 40 people in a message group.

It’s useful to think of sociality as an immune response to crises. Rather than panicking or looking for ways to escape, how do I increase the quality and quantity of relations around me? And sociality extends to the non-human! My favorite beach in Port Dickson is located next to a coal power plant. When the refinery disturbs my rest, I think of the mangrove trees there, who have not known a night of true darkness or silence in decades. They teach me to endure.

You mention how visitors to “I Like This Place”—a printmaking exhibition and community programme—acted like social protagonists in the context of a local space where your art was shown; a small town with two oil refineries and two coal power plants. Could you elaborate on the distinction between gallery audience and social protagonists, and why does it matter in this context?

I grew up in the city. "I Like This Place" was the first time I showed my art in Port Dickson, since moving here in 2011. I’ve been practicing art for two decades, in all kinds of contexts and geographies: museums, galleries, the streets, shopping malls, etc. But I’ve never experienced anything like the reactions of local visitors in Port Dickson: people would take a long look at my art, then turn to me and start telling their life story, in intimate detail. 

I was humbled, confused, and finally, intrigued. It was tempting to see it as a folksy provincialism, but that felt like a misread. I lacked the language to articulate why, until Loreto and Federico of Grupo Etcétera—previous CAREC mentors and interdisciplinary art group—introduced me to the idea of ‘social protagonists’. Rather than absorbing the content of art as spectators, the locals responded to it by narrating their own lives. 

How people respond in front of art is important, because it reveals art’s social function - one that goes far beyond ‘raising awareness’ about this or that crisis. Are we passive consumers, or are we the authors of our own existence? This question becomes urgent in the face of the many species-level challenges confronting humanity. 

Where is the line between art and activism for you? Do you believe art can truly make a change to battle climate crisis issues, or is there a clear separation between art and action for you?

In the field of action, art and activism exist as separate positions for me. These positions engender different modes of thinking and speaking; they require different skill sets. My activism is goal-oriented, strategic and tactical - e.g. I actually have to read the air pollution regulations, because these are the weapons with which we approach local institutions and compel them to compel the refinery to operate within the law. And art, what do I want from art? I want art to make me cry, to fill my spirit exhausted with existence, to bring tomorrow a little closer. Folders of research displayed in a gallery, or installations of curated books about the anthropocene… these don’t do it for me.

Collapsing art and activism often obscures the intention of our actions. At worst, this lack of clarity enables artwashing and greenwashing; at best, it is counterproductive in defining and reaching our aims.

Where art and activism do meet, is in the field of the spirit. Both are manifestations of the will – a determination, devotion, or love – that gives birth to something in the world.

As a CAREC Fellow, have you experienced the programme helping make a change in the fight for climate justice?

Being a CAREC fellow allowed me to commit to being an activist. Before the programme, I’d been spending more and more time organizing against refinery pollution - very slowly, I felt my art practice slipping. Looking back now, anxiety about that loss held me back in all areas of my life. I didn’t think it was possible to do both art and activism, make a living and achieve what I needed to achieve.

In this sense, CAREC expands the horizon for what an art practice can be: yes, you can live and work outside the city; yes, you can go deeper into your art; yes, you can commit even harder to your community.

It matters, because an organization like Prince Claus Fund shapes both the views of society and the ambitions of artists - it is, after all, an institution that counts the likes of Mahmoud Darwish and Abel Rodríguez as past laureates, may they rest in peace and power.

Last year, our neighborhood achieved its goal of meeting face-to-face with the refinery’s top executives and the local authorities. Since then, the refinery has kept its black smoke emissions at or below Ringelmann Scale 2, as stipulated by Malaysian law. A recent study estimated that cutting air pollution from burning fossil fuels could save 50,000 lives from premature death in the US alone. If our efforts have clawed back even a single year, or 5, or 10 years, of human and non-human life in Port Dickson, it will have been worth it.

And – in no small part thanks to CAREC – I did not stop making art. 2024 turned out to be one of my most creatively productive years ever.

A long time ago, I had a proposal for an art residency in one’s own neighborhood. Instead of going to an exotic location, artists would be funded for a year to live and work in their own locality. No one could see the merit! CAREC allowed me to put this proposal into practice at last, and to make evident the social transformation that occurs when artists are embedded in their communities and the land.

What does the future look like to you?

Change; transformation. One way or another. When I think of the future, I think about what Tyson Yunkaporta calls the “thousand-year cleanup”. I’m just another ant embarking on that task. I pray for my own awakening, an ant-sized awakening. Doesn’t seem so hard now, does it?