Have you ever heard an emerging artist talk? Like, you know, string together full sentences and say them out loud?
Sam Kan is a writer and performer who graduated from the MFA programme at the Slade in 2026. This was her first institutional solo performance and marked the beginning of her professional artistic career. Prior to attending the Slade, Sam had only recently found out what art is (some guy she went on a date with told her about it—at length—and she was really impressed), and now, with educational validation in her pocket, she had decided to identify as an emerging artist. She told herself, “I am an artist,” every morning. She was emerging from the deep, dark depths, blinking her big goo-goo eyes and swishing her bushy tail as she stepped forth into the land of the enlightened.
In this performance, Sam talked about where she had come from (the depths) and where she wanted to go. She demonstrated the power of language and naming: “I am an artist.” She questioned what she knew about herself and the world around her, and she explored what she imagined it could be. As her eyes adjusted to this newfound world, Sam could not always discern between what was really there and what she was imagining. To paraphrase Virginia Woolf, nothing is ever simply one thing.