Lin’s profound explorations of Bai’s ethnic minority group’s culture, lifestyle, and zā huā techniques (in Bai dialect 扎花 [zā huā] is colloquial for tie-dying) culminated in the creation of the She series. It pays tribute to and celebrates women whose hard work and devotion to the life of making carried on the ancient craft traditions, including the ones of Bai tie-dying, to the present day. She is meters of cotton fabric laboriously stretched, tucked, folded, pleated, knotted, and stitched. With the simplest of auxiliary tools, the plain fabric is transformed into the undulating landscapes of knots and pleats.
She's Perception
Stainless steel spray coating, cotton cloth, thread
150*140*70 cm 2023
The new creations presented for the exhibition from the She’s Body series, unlike her earlier works made of undyed fabric, are submerged in color - crimson red, brilliant yellow, violet, or purple. Some works feature currents of greens, yellows, and purples flowing effortlessly one into the other.
An exuberant carnival of colors, shapes, knobs, and bulges. Myriads of them seem to be repeating themselves, and yet no two are alike. They grow and sprawl like cell division, corals, seashells, jellyfish with short tentacles and longer stinging arms. Lin’s colorful cotton membrane of twirls and pleats seems to transport us to the magnificent underwater world, the womb and heart of the planet where life started to pulsate eons of years ago. Taking us on a deep dive into the ocean, she likens the underwater world to the strong currents of blood that run through women’s bodies, to the streams of feminine energy that are life-giving. The She’s Body series is an initiation that rises out of women’s innate psychology and physicality, out of the powerful feminine principles that stand behind the matrix of creation, that births children, shapes lands, tends to our homes, protects, encourages, and forgives, builds, instills hope, makes new, breathes fresh starts, gives grace, bears burdens, scarifies and lives in a way that heals.
She’s fiery love 2023, Plant-dyed Cotton, Cotton Thread, Wood, 225*165*25 cm
She’s red body 2023
Plant-dyed Cotton, Cotton Thread, Wood
150*113*25 cm
The brilliant red that dominates the She’s Body series comes to represent blood and life, blood as the energy of life that streams through the arteries of the body delivering oxygen and nutrients to its extremities. The yellows, purples, and violet, symbolize human flesh and skin that are perfect in their imperfections. Bruised and wounded, the female flesh, both figuratively and literally, carries marks of collective negligence and abuse through centuries of human civilization, yet it is strong enough to heal and recover over and over again. “Within these flesh-toned undulations, akin to life's very pulse, courses an unwavering stream of feminine vitality—an energy that animates the very essence of existence”, reflects the artist.
Coming across Lin’s She’s Body series is an incredibly visceral experience. The intense physicality of her work is indisputable. The energy she imbues them with is almost palpable. Peculiar forms of nature-informed abstractions respond to our presence. The texture of the surfaces and stimulating colors almost demand skin-to-skin contact. It is as if the artist entices you to experience the work through the fibers of your body, and through this connection she hopes to lead you back to yourself, the world within, and, inevitably, to a more sincere world around you.
About Love under the Hammer
The bright cloth–a traditional kind of ancient Dong minority hand craft fabric– inspired this work, and is the main material I worked with to create it. The production of the bright cloth consists over 20 procedures including dying, hammering, hanging to dry under the sun and applying the surface to egg-white and etc. In the end the material become shinny and that is how its name came from. To this day, the bright cloth is still used by the Dong minority people to make garments.
During the time when I lived and worked together with the local craftswomen, I was impressed by their diligent work, the way they hammer the fabrics over countless times, and the freshness they gave the fabrics after each beat. All this works takes a lot of time and effort to complete, and those women repeat this work over the riverbank and under the trees, as if they shaped their very life by the hammer in their hand.
Fiber, conventionally thought to be soft and a metaphor of feminist, could also apply a look like metal through repeated tempered. This is a new attempt, which represents a fact that cannot be ignore anymore: women are becoming stronger and more powerful, just as what you see in this work.
