Peilin Shi
2026 Residency
For this residency, Peilin Shi will develop a reconfiguration of the Southern Chinese Hakka ritual of Bridal Wailing (哭嫁). Bridal Wailing is a communal practice among Hakka women, functioning as both farewell and protest, originating at a time when women had very little marriage autonomy. Peilin will investigate the tension between the historical specificity of the practice and its contemporary resonance for women and diasporic communities navigating displacement, precarity and belonging. The project will investigate how emotional connection can emerge when language is partially or wholly untranslated through repetition, mistranslation and vocal exhaustion.
About the artist
Working across spoken word, song, and applied storytelling, Peilin explores ancestral knowledge, migration, and the fragile space between languages. Her work centres on Hakka women’s lived histories, rituals of endurance, care, and survival carried through voice and daily practice, and asks how folk traditions might function within contemporary performance.