Hsin x Pauline

Smuggling Bodies, Forging Skins

‘Smuggling Bodies, Forging Skins’ explores how wearables operate as interfaces that negotiate embodiment between physical and digital bodies. Through a performative encounter between garments, bodies, and virtual avatars, the work examines the frictions that emerge when physical and digital forms refuse to align. It questions how digital avatar systems constrain our understanding of the body by predefining which bodies are legible and how embodiment is conceived, while exploring how these boundaries might be destabilised and reconfigured.

Hsin Min Chan is a transdisciplinary designer from Taiwan, based in the Netherlands. Her practice examines how bodies are shaped, disciplined, and interpreted through social, cultural, and technological systems. Using autoethnographic and participatory approaches, she draws from lived experience to investigate power dynamics embedded in the gaze, and how dominant forms of knowledge and technology shape body norms, behaviour, and autonomy. Her work spans installation, performance, moving image, sculpture, drawing, XR, and live streaming. Through these forms, she stages interventions that disrupt normalised systems and propose alternative avenues of resistance.

Pauline Blind is a fashion designer and creative director based in Amsterdam. She founded her label in 2024, right after graduating from AMFI and presenting her collection A Girl Is a Gun at Amsterdam Fashion Week as a Lichting finalist. Alongside her collections, she works on diverse creative projects, including designing custom stage looks for artists, creative directing campaigns, and creating bespoke wedding dresses that merge conceptual design with personal storytelling.