Cheung Qin

Cheung Qin is a candidate for the Master of Architecture degree at MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning. He received a BFA in Architectural Design with an Interdisciplinary Sculpture concentration from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2019. Over the subsequent three years, he explored unorthodox avenues within architecture, immersing himself in exhibition design, contemporary sculpture practices, and digital fabrication.

In his artistic practice, Cheung Qin constructs actant instruments—inanimate objects or machines that harbor stories of resilience by performing autonomously. Qin attempts to make these objects transcend their static nature and surveys the fleeting affective moments of a speculative future past. The term "actant" originates from Actor-Network Theory (ANT), a sociological framework developed by Bruno Latour and others, which suggests that both human and non-human entities (or "actants") possess the capacity to influence a network or system. Drawing from this concept, Qin's practice positions inanimate objects as active participants, not mere passive tools, within a larger network of interactions.