Samson Young’s practice as an artist de­veloped out of a cross-cultural training in music composition. Young channels his attunement to melody by pushing its formalist boundaries to create innovative cross-media experiences that touch upon recurring topics of identity, war, and literature.

Young’s work encompasses a sense of play and wit through the inclusion of unexpected sounds, ranging from the ring of Gameboys, fanfare rides, and Cantonese nursery rhymes to references to great works of fiction.

The installation series entitled Possible Music (2018) is an ongoing work developed in collaboration with NESS who have developed a pioneering code-driven software that generates sound with virtual instruments, making it possible for Young to compose music for instruments that cannot exist in reality.

Possible Music #2 (2019) is a 16-channel sound installation of short compositions performed by virtual instruments that make reference to military “signal calls”—short tunes (typically performed on the trum­pet) that announce changes in daily routines in a mili­tary camp or on a battlefield—with titles like Attention Call, Fatigue Call, Assembly Call, Fantasy Call #1, and Sick Call.

This work was made possible through the NESS software and a NESS laboratory residency, courtesy of NESS, Stefan Bilbao, Talbot Rice Gallery, and Tessa Giblin at the University of Edinburgh. Its research was further supported by the Talbot Rice Gallery, St Cecil­ia’s Hall, and the Reid School of Music at the University of Edinburgh.

Samson Young is an artist and composer living and working in Hong Kong. Solo exhibitions include the De Appel, Amsterdam; Kunsthalle Düsseldorf; Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh; SMART Museum, Chicago; Centre for Contemporary Chinese Art in Manchester; and M+ Pavilion, Hong Kong. Group exhibitions include the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Gropius Bau, Berlin; Performa 19, New York; Biennale of Sydney; Shanghai Biennale; National Museum of Art, Osaka; National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; and Documenta 14: documenta radio. In 2017, he represented Hong Kong in a solo project at the Hong Kong Pavilion of the 57th Venice Biennale.

He was the recipient of the BMW / Art Basel Art Journey Award, Hong Kong Arts Development Council Artist of the Year Award, Prix Ars Electronica, and the Bloomberg Emerging Artist Award. In 2020, he was awarded the inaugural Sigg Prize.