String and Bones: In the Lap of Violence and Luxury

For one of China’s most well-known contemporary artists, Lin Tianmiao certainly is cagey about her artistic process. When I sat down with her at her home studio in Songzhuang and began asking about her new exhibit at the Beijing Center for the Arts (BCA), entitled “The Same,” she claimed that she “just came up with a title” after finishing her works, simply because “every exhibit needs one.” Whether she’s being coy or just evasive, this comment clashes with the BCA’s own website, which explains that the name is meant to remind us how “everything looks the same if you watch at a distance; and nothing may be the same if you get closer.”

Looking past the artspeak, what we have here is several cavernous rooms filled with objects meticulously wrapped in exuberantly colored silk, linen and gold. They range from wooden and metal tools to a collection of animal bones (don’t worry – they’re synthetic, ordered online from the same folks who supply medical schools and other science programs with sample skeletons). In one room, Lin has created a plushy, black cashmerelined apocalypse, populated by gold-foiled skeletons in various states of wholeness. It looks like what would happen if Versace showed up at an archaeological dig and thought, “Oh God, this is dreadful, let me just … There, isn’t that better?” The effect is glam, creepy and beautiful.

Her work has always hinted at a quiet violence underneath a prim, white aesthetic; wrapping with thread has been part of her practice since 1997, though never before with color. This time, however, that violence explodes – and rather joyfully at that. I asked how the bones, which bear the symbolic brunt of that violence, began figuring into her practice.

Lin replied, “I think this has something to do with the timing of my mom having just passed away. But maybe it’s not that direct. Most people find bones kind of traumatizing. But this doesn’t have to be the case. They’re actually quite beautiful. The more I worked with them, the more they lost that creepy feeling. But I did still want to express a sense of past glory, of a fantastic withering away … In order to achieve glory, you first need to experience death.”

Apparently, in order to achieve glory, you also need to spend a lot of time carefully wrapping strands and strands of thread around synthetic skulls – or train the right people to do it for you. “We have a team of about 20 people, and it took one and a half to two years to complete the works for this exhibit.” As might be expected, Lin’s use of detailed handiwork and materials like thread and fabric – not to mention some of the images in her work, including parts of women’s bodies filled with bulbous, stringy innards – prompts many to label her a “feminist artist,” a title she staunchly resists.

“I’m a woman, and I’m an artist. But I really don’t support this distinction between male and female artists. I don’t think women should be split off as this separate group; it’s marginalizing. I think that women, in any school of thought or discipline, can play the most important roles regardless of gender. And I don’t think I’m a feminist artist; I don’t even understand what ‘feminist’ means.”

Yet again, it’s easy to wonder whether the artist is playing dumb. As much as she tries to shrug off any suggestions of her intentionality – in naming the exhibit, in what social realities she hoped to express, even in why she chooses to use color this time – her work on the other hand is so focused, her new exhibit so exacting in its balance of opulence and death, that her protestations have a hard time being heard.

Things won’t be “The Same” at the BCA after Feb 26. Catch the show before then.

Click here to see the February issue of the Beijinger in full.

Photos: Marilyn Mai