Los Angeles–based artist Candice Lin (born 1979) creates multisensory environments that investigate the legacies of colonialism, racism, and sexism, often by mapping the trade routes and histories of colonial goods, including sugar, tea, indigo, and cochineal. Drawing from years of material research, Lin has created a new body of work that is grounded in the uncanny sense of isolation yet collective experience that has marked our lives during these pandemic years.
Co-organized by the Walker Art Center and the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts, Candice Lin: Seeping, Rotting, Resting, Weeping is composed of an immersive multisensory installation that responds to each of its gallery sites, including BAMPFA, allowing the work to evolve over the course of its presentation. Anchored by a nomadic tent structure—simultaneously a temporary shelter and a quasi-religious temple—the exhibition includes hand-dyed, drawn, and hand-printed indigo textiles; hand-built ceramic sculptures; plaster and concrete “tactile theaters”; and a video animation that leads visitors through qigong breathing and movement exercises. With cats abounding in the space, from ceramic figures curled up inside the tent to the video’s animated cat demon, the exhibition imagines an existence in which typically neglectful human caretakers of the world are no longer the protagonists.The BAMPFA presentation is accompanied by a specially curated selection of Buddhist works of imagined animal/human/nature configurations chosen by the artist from the museum’s collection to live in dialog with her installation.
Edited and with essays by Walker associate curator Victoria Sung and Dan Byers, the Carpenter Center’s John R. and Barbara Robinson Family Director, the fully illustrated exhibition catalog documents the artist’s research and studio process and includes a commissioned essay by UC Berkeley professors Julia Bryan-Wilson (History of Art Department) and Mel Y. Chen (Gender and Women’s Studies Department).
This exhibition is co-organized by the Walker Art Center and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University. It is co-curated by Victoria Sung, associate curator of visual arts, Walker Art Center; and Dan Byers, John R. and Barbara Robinson Family Director, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University. BAMPFA coordination is provided by former chief curator Christina Yang and Elaine Yau, associate curator.