Candice Lin (born 1979) is an American interdisciplinary artist who works in installation, sculpture, drawing, ceramics, and video. Her work is multi-sensorial and often includes living and organic materials and processes. [1]
Lin lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She is co-founder and co-director of the artist-run collective and space Monte Vista Projects [2] [3] and is an assistant professor in the Department of Art at the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture. [4]
Lin was born in Concord, Massachusetts in 1979. She graduated from Brown University in 2001, where she received a dual BA in Visual Arts and Art Semiotics. [5] She then attended and graduated from San Francisco Art Institute in 2004, where she received an MFA in New Genres. [6]
Lin is known for her ethnographic approach to art-making alongside crude fantasy scenes. [7] A strong interest in the history of slavery and the cultural implications of colonialism informs her work. [8] [9] The post-colonial critique behind Lin's work can be seen in her piece, Dildos (Corn Hill, Queen Victoria, Bird in Space) (2012) first shown at a solo show at Francois Ghebaly Gallery . [10] Here, dildos encased in bell jars are made from molds of corn and are either pink, white, or black—hyperbolic "skin tones." [11]
The list of materials in Lin's work is extensive. One piece, as described by art critic Michael Ned Holte, includes "cochineal (a prized red dye made from crushed insects), poppy seeds, metal castings, water, tea, sugar, a copper still, a hot plate, ceramic vessels, a mortar and pestle, mud from the Thames, and something called a 'microbial mud battery.'" [12] These materials often are multi-sensorial and intangible. In 2017, Lin collaborated with artist Patrick Staff to create the piece Hormonal Fog, a smoke machine that pumped testosterone-lowering, plant-based tinctures into the gallery space. [13]
Lin uses a variety of fluids, like tea, collected and distilled urine, and moisture. [14] These fluids, as Holte suggests, "perform a 'wet potential' to seep into and erode the stabilizing forces and categorical imperatives that define a colonialist imaginary, one that shamefully continues into the present." [12]
Recently, Lin has been characterized as one of the most radical artists in terms of the deconstruction of androcentric images of the female body. Lin's work often "resist the sovereignty of the [masculine] eye" and exposes "the violence of the gyneco-scopic regime" that "cuts the [female] body into pieces, making visual, anatomical, and aesthetic cuts to produce territories or genital organs. These chunks of the body are recodified as synecdoches (that is, the part represents the whole: woman is represented by a piece of herself, genitals represent gender, etc.)" [15]
From 2004 to 2011 Lin was awarded several residencies, grants, and fellowships. These include the Frankfurter Kunstverein Deutsche Borse Residency, Sacatar Foundation Artist Residency in Brazil in 2011. In 2010, she was invited to the Banff Centre Artist Residency in Canada and the Department of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs CEI grant. The Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship was awarded to her in 2009, and AIR at CESTA located in the Czech Republic, in 2004.
In 2016 Lin's A Body Reduced to Brilliant Colour [16] show at Gasworks Gallery in London was reviewed in Art in America . [17] Lin also participated in a residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts. [18]
In 2017 Lin was included in Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon at the New Museum. [19] The show, which featured the work of over 40 artists, was the largest show to date at a major museum dealing with the theme of gender fluidity. [13] Lin's collaboration with artist Patrick Staff, Hormonal Fog, was displayed and pumped into the museum's lobby. [13]
In 2017 Lin was included in The Sharjah Biennial 13: Upon a Shifting Plate. [20]
In 2018 Lin was included in Made in L.A. 2018 at the Hammer Museum. [21]
In 2018 Lin had her first solo exhibition in Chicago, A Hard White Body, a Porous Slip, at Logan Center Exhibitions. [22] One installation incorporated biographical references to writer James Baldwin and French botanist Jeanne Baret. [23]
In 2024 an exhibition of Lin's work, 'The Animal Husband', was held at the Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh. This was her first solo exhibition in Scotland. [24]
Judy Chicago is an American feminist artist, art educator, and writer known for her large collaborative art installation pieces about birth and creation images, which examine the role of women in history and culture. During the 1970s, Chicago founded the first feminist art program in the United States at California State University, Fresno which acted as a catalyst for feminist art and art education during the 1970s. Her inclusion in hundreds of publications in various areas of the world showcases her influence in the worldwide art community. Additionally, many of her books have been published in other countries, making her work more accessible to international readers. Chicago's work incorporates a variety of artistic skills, such as needlework, counterbalanced with skills such as welding and pyrotechnics. Chicago's most well known work is The Dinner Party, which is permanently installed in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. The Dinner Party celebrates the accomplishments of women throughout history and is widely regarded as the first epic feminist artwork. Other notable art projects by Chicago include International Honor Quilt, Birth Project, Powerplay, and The Holocaust Project. She is represented by Jessica Silverman gallery.
Alison Saar is a Los Angeles, California based sculptor, mixed-media, and installation artist. Her artwork focuses on the African diaspora and black female identity and is influenced by African, Caribbean, and Latin American folk art and spirituality. Saar is well known for "transforming found objects to reflect themes of cultural and social identity, history, and religion." Saar credits her parents, collagist and assemblage artist Betye Saar and painter and art conservator Richard Saar, for her early exposure to are and to these metaphysical and spiritual practices. Saar followed in her parents footsteps along with her sisters, Lezley Saar and Tracye Saar-Cavanaugh who are also artists. Saar has been a practicing artist for many years, exhibiting in galleries around the world as well as installing public art works in New York City. She has received achievement awards from institutions including the New York City Art Commission as well as the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.
Judy Fiskin is an American artist working in photography and video, and a member of the art school faculty at California Institute of the Arts. Her videos have been screened in the Documentary Fortnight series at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles; her photographs have been shown at MOCA, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, at The New Museum in New York City, and at the Pompidou Center in Paris.
My Barbarian is a Los Angeles based collaborative theatrical group consisting of Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon and Alexandro Segade. The trio makes site-responsive performances and video installations that use theatrical play to draw allegorical narratives out of historical dilemmas, mythical conflicts, and current political crises.
Barbara Turner Smith is an American artist known for her performance art in the late 1960s, exploring themes of food, nurturing, the body, spirituality, and sexuality. Smith was part of the Feminist Movement in Southern California in the 1970s and has collaborated in her work with scientists and other artists. Her work has been widely exhibited and collected by major museums including the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Hammer Museum, MOCA, LACMA, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Patty Chang is an American performance artist and film director living and working in Los Angeles, California. Originally trained as a painter, Chang received her Bachelor of Arts at the University of California, San Diego. It wasn't until she moved to New York that she became involved with the performance art scene.
Millie Wilson is an artist and teacher who lives and works in Austin, Texas. Wilson was a member of the faculty in the Program in Art at The California Institute of the Arts from 1985 to 2014.
Samta Benyahia born in Constantine, Algeria, in 1950, is an Algerian French artist, known for her Arab Berber Andalusian geometrical patterns and rosaceae, called fatima.
Edgar Arceneaux is a contemporary artist who lives and works in Los Angeles, California. He is the co-founder of the Watts House Project, a non-profit neighborhood redevelopment organization in Watts.
Tameka Norris, also known as T.J. Dedeaux-Norris and Meka Jean, is an American visual and performing artist. Norris uses painting, sculpture, and performance art to create work about racial identity and the simultaneous visibility and invisibility of blackness through cultural appropriation in modern society. Her work critiques the presence of the Black body in the history of painting and fine art.
Lari George Pittman is a Colombian-American contemporary artist and painter. Pittman is an Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Painting and Drawing at the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture.
Allison Miller is a contemporary painter who is based in Los Angeles.
Zarina Hashmi, known professionally as Zarina, was an Indian American artist and printmaker based in New York City. Her work spans drawing, printmaking, and sculpture. Associated with the minimalist movement, her work utilized abstract and geometric forms in order to evoke a spiritual reaction from the viewer.
Catalina BauerNovoa, born in Buenos Aires on September 15, 1976, is a visual artist from Chile.
Iole Antunes de Freitas is a Brazilian sculptor, engraver, and installation artist who works in the field of contemporary art. Freitas began her career in the 1970s, participating in a group of artists in Milan, Italy linked to Body art. She used photography. In the 1980s, she returned to Brazil, but abandoned the human body as mediator of her work, adopting the "sculpture body". The artist uses materials such as wire, canvas, steel, copper, stone, and water to create her works.
Kenya (Robinson) (born 1977) is an American multimedia artist whose work includes performance, sculpture and installation. Raised in Gainesville, Florida, (Robinson)'s work depicts themes of privilege and consumerism, exploring perceptions of gender, race and ability. Combining a variety of audio-visual elements and live performance, (Robinson)'s work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, The Kitchen, The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, and the 60 Wall Street Gallery of Deutsche Bank. She has lectured at Hampshire College, Long Island University, and the University of Florida.
Patricia Fernández Carcedo is a Spanish-born Los Angeles-based female artist.
Peju Alatise is a Nigerian artist, poet, writer, and a fellow at the National Museum of African Art, part of the Smithsonian Institution. Alatise received formal training as an architect at Ladoke Akintola University in Oyo State, Nigeria. She then went on to work for 20 years as a studio artist.
Won Ju Lim is a Korean American artist. She currently divides her time between Los Angeles, CA and Boston, MA.
P. Staff is a contemporary visual and performance artist.