Lin
Tianmiao, Braiding (1998). Since 1998, Lin Tianmiao
has executed a series of hauntingly pale photographic images of herself
on canvas, hanging them like semi-transparent screens in exhibition
spaces. In this 12-foot-tall installation work, the soft gray tones
of the images are softened further by stitches that run randomly across
the work’s surface, each one with its thread trailing out behind
running down to accumulate on the floor below. These threads are meant
as metaphors for all the tiny habits and customs that make up culture,
and which can be experienced as bindings from which it requires great
strength to break free.
credits
Mixed media installation, dimensions variable.
Courtesy of the artist and CourtYard Gallery, Beijing.
Arising from a culture that has traditionally been marked by the subordination
of the individual to the collective, these works all reflect the emergence
of hybrid new conceptions of selfhood and personal identity in contemporary
China.