Lin Tianmiao
Lin Tianmiao | |
|---|---|
林天苗 | |
 Lin Tianmiao, studio tour Beijing, July 2015 | |
| Born | 1961 Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, China |
| Nationality | Chinese |
| Known for | sculpture, mixed media |
| Website | lintianmiao |
Lin Tianmiao (Chinese: 林天苗; pinyin: Lín tīan míao; born 1961) is a contemporary Chinese installation artist and textile designer. She sometimes makes use of everyday objects.[1]
Life
[edit]Lin Tianmiao was born in 1961 in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, China. Her father was an ink painter and master calligrapher[2] and her mother studied and taught traditional dance.[1] She received a BFA from Capital Normal University in 1961, and later studied at the Art Students League in New York City in 1989.[3]
She lived in Brooklyn from 1988[2] to 1994. She returned to Beijing in 1995 and converted her home into an open studio which was an important venue for Apartment Art.[1] She is married to Wang Gongxin,[1] who is a video artist, and together they have a son, Shaun.[2] She has said that life's experience is constantly changing, and the way her works are presented is also constantly changing.[4][5]
Work
[edit]Lin started her career as a textile designer and used the skills she had learned in her later work.[citation needed] She changed from textile design to art because she felt like design was limiting her creativity and suppressing her expression.[6] Lin and her husband participated in the Beijing Young Artists' Painting Society, which was contiguous with the '85 Art New Wave Movement.[6] Her work is multifaceted. She sees it as representing both tradition and newness.[6] She co-founded the Loft New Media Art Center in 2001.[1]
In the 1990s Lin created works with materials of contrasting textures,[1] often using undyed cotton thread. She has also worked in other media such as sculpture, photography, video and mixed media.[7] An early work, The Proliferation of Thread Winding (1995), included 20,000 balls of thread attached with needles to a rice paper-covered iron bed.[1][8] In 2012, she made a series of works using a wooden frame, threads and synthetic bones; Minty Blue (2012) and Duckling Yellow (2012) were two works in the series.[7]
At the 2002 Shanghai Biennale she and her husband collaborated on Here or There; she described the collaboration as "unspeakable", and resolved to "never cooperate anymore."[9] She had a 2006 residency at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute where she experimented with paper media and printmaking.[1][10] Since the mid-1990s, her works have been included in every major international museum show on Chinese contemporary art.[2]
She had her solo exhibition Gazing Back: The Art of Lin Tianmiao, 對視——林天苗藝術展 as part of the 'Shanghai Pujiang OCT Ten-Year Public Art Project · 2009'. It includes three groups of works, Badges, Advent and Gazing Back, which were all created especially for this public art project. [11]
In 2017, her show at Galerie Lelong in New York exhibited her work Protruding Patterns (2014), which encouraged visitors to walk over her work - an installation made entirely of antique carpets. The carpets were embroidered with dozens of words about women in Chinese, English, French and other tongues - a selection of approximately 2,000 phrases she had collected over a period of more than five years. [12][13]
Feminist themes
[edit]Lin's work often deals with themes traditionally applicable to women. With its focus on the manifestations of domesticity and motherhood, critics have compared her work to Western feminist art , she has rejected that characterization.[1][14]
“My art is an expression of my life, as an artist, as a Chinese, and I suppose, as a woman,” she responded to the art world’s routine characterization of her as a “Chinese woman artist.”¹ She uncouples these terms as a reminder to art critics and art historians that her work transcends such an essentializing label.[15] She views that the label feminisim restricts the interpretation of her works, and how she thinks about them. [12]
List of selected artworks and exhibitions
[edit]- The Proliferation of Thread Winding, 1995, Asia Society Museum, New York, 2012
- Bound and Unbound, Art Museum of China Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China, 1997
- Focus on Paper, Singapore Tyler Print Institute, Singapore, 2007
- Mother's!!!, 2008, Asia Society Museum, New York, 2012
- More or Less the Same, 2011, Asia Society Museum, New York, 2012
- Protruding Patterns, 2014, Galerie Lelong & Co, New York, 2017[12]
- Systems, Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, China, 2018[7]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d e f g h i Suzuki, Sarah (2010). "Lin Tianmiao". Modern Women: Women Artists at the Museum of Modern Art. New York: Museum of Modern Art. pp. 405–406. ISBN 978-0-87070-771-1.
- ^ a b c d Pollack, Barbara (October 2012). "Wrap Artist" (PDF). ARTnews. pp. 86–93.
- ^ Caruso, Hwa Young (June 1, 2013). "Lin Tianmiao: A contemporary Chinese Woman Artist". International Journal of Multicultural Education. 15. doi:10.18251/ijme.v15i1.721. S2CID 143240477.
- ^ Lin, Tianmiao. "Non Zero".
- ^ Caruso, Dr Hwa Young (April 11, 2013). "Art Review: Lin Tianmiao: A Contemporary Chinese Woman Artist". International Journal of Multicultural Education. 15 (1). doi:10.18251/ijme.v15i1.721. ISSN 1934-5267.
- ^ a b c Wang, Peggy. 2012. "Subversion, culture shock, "Women's Art": an interview with Lin Tianmiao". n.paradoxa. 2012: 22-31.
- ^ a b c "Lin Tianmiao: Systems". Rockbund Art Museum. Retrieved November 27, 2018.
- ^ "Bound Unbound: Lin Tianmiao". Asia Society. September 7, 2012. Retrieved March 3, 2016.
- ^ Hao, He (2014). "A Designer's Decade of Contemporary Art in China : The Book Designs of He Hao".
- ^ Archive, Asia Art. "Focus: On Paper". aaa.org.hk. Retrieved March 2, 2024.
- ^ Archive, Asia Art. "Gazing Back: The Art of Lin Tianmiao". aaa.org.hk. Retrieved March 2, 2024.
- ^ a b c Cascone, Sarah (October 16, 2017). "This Artist Gathered 2,000 Words for Women—and Now, She Wants You to Walk All Over Them". Artnet News. Retrieved March 2, 2024.
- ^ Panicelli, Ida (December 1, 2017). "Lin Tianmiao". Artforum. Retrieved March 2, 2024.
- ^ 1. Smith, Karen (October 2012). "Woven Labors" (PDF). Art in America: 138–144. I looked in many books and catalogues about female artists to see if this was true but came to the conclusion that it was not. I had always judged life from my own experience as a person, who just happened to be a woman.
- ^ Wang, Peggy (2020). The Future History of Contemporary Chinese Art. University of Minnesota Press.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
| Other | |
