Between Past and Future
Lin Tianmiao
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.
Lin Tianmiao
Liu Zheng
credits
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.
Asia Society History and Memory Reimaging the Body People and Place Performing the Self International Center of Photography
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