Maya Lin has dedicated her 40+ year career to creating art that makes the viewer react or, as she puts it, make people “stop thinking and just feel”.
From her earliest projects of groundbreaking artwork in her imaginative Ohio bedroom as a child, to numerous large-scale projects, monuments and memorabilia realized over the decades, including Yale’s public sculpture “Women’s Dining Table, Lahn.” The Ston Hughes Library in Tennessee, the Haunted Forest installation in New York, the 60-foot bell tower in Guangdong, China, Lin’s aesthetic focuses on creating an emotional interaction between her work and the viewer.
In a video interview, “Maya Lin, In Her Own Words,” produced by the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, Lin said that there are two ways to relate to creative work: one is intellectual and the other is psychological, which she prefers the Path of Discovery. .
“It’s like, stop thinking and just feel. It’s almost like you’re absorbing it through your skin. You absorb it more on a psychological level, that is, on an empathic level,” says Lim about how she imagines the development of her art. Say it back. “So what I’m doing is trying to have a very intimate one-on-one conversation with the audience.”
Lin has excelled at creating conversations since he began his career in 1981, studying architecture at Yale University. alley in Washington, DC.
Lin’s striking vision for the memorial was initially met with harsh criticism from veterans’ groups and others, including members of Congress who otherwise gravitated towards a more traditional style. But the architecture student remained unwavering in her design intentions.
Robert Doubek, program director at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, said he admires Lin’s self-confidence and remembers how the “very impressive” young student stood up for himself in organizational negotiations and defended the integrity of his design. Today, the V-shaped memorial is widely celebrated, with over 5 million visitors annually, many of whom consider it a pilgrimage and leave small letters, medals, and photographs in memory of their lost families and friends.
Since the beginning of her public career, the pioneering artist has continued to amaze fans, fellow artists, and even world leaders with her wonders.
In 2016, President Barack Obama awarded Lyn the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her outstanding work of art and architecture in the fields of human rights, civil rights, and environmentalism.
Lining, who prefers to keep much of her inner life a secret and shuns the media, including the Smithsonian Magazine, is now the subject of a biographical exhibition dedicated to the designer and sculptor. “One Life: Maya Lin” at the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution takes you through Lin’s evolving career, featuring many family photographs and memorabilia from her childhood, as well as a collection of 3D models, sketchbooks, drawings, sculptures, and photographs featuring her. a life. The artist’s approach is behind some noteworthy designs.
Dorothy Moss, exhibition organizer, said she first met Lin when the museum began commissioning portraits of the artist to honor her contributions to American history, culture, art and architecture. Miniature 3D sculptures created by artist Karin Sander in 2014 — color scans of Lin, who made non-traditional 2D and 3D prints, taking millions of photographs of the artist’s surroundings — are also on display.
The feeling that Lin is on the edge is reflected in Sander’s portrait. Lin says this view of life in opposites is articulated in many of her writings.
“Maybe it’s because of my East-West heritage, making things on the frontier; is this science? Is it art? Is it the East? Is it the West? Is it solid or liquid? Lin Zai said in an interview with the museum.
Moss said she became interested in Lin’s story after learning about the artist’s family heritage and how she grew up in the only Chinese family in the neighborhood. “You know, I started to think that as the daughter of two Chinese immigrants who grew up in rural Ohio, it would be great to tell her story and then pursue this wonderful career. That’s how I met her,” Moh said.
“We’re a really close-knit family and they’re also kind of a very typical immigrant family and they leave a lot of stuff behind. China? “They never brought it up,” Lin said, but she felt a “different” feeling in her parents.
Part of a 2006 series on the lives of celebrities including Dolores Huerta, Babe Ruth, Marian Anderson, and Sylvia Plath, the One Life exhibition is the museum’s first exhibition dedicated to Asian Americans.
“The way we’ve laid out the Lifetime exhibit is roughly chronological, so you can look at childhood, early influences, and contributions over time,” Moss said.
Lin was born in 1959 to Henry Huang Lin and Julia Chang Lin. Her father immigrated to the United States in the 1940s and became an accomplished potter after studying pottery at the University of Washington where he met his wife Julia. In the year of Lin’s birth, they moved to Athens. Henry taught pottery at Ohio University and eventually became dean of the School of Fine Arts. The exhibition features an untitled work by her father.
Lin told the museum that her father’s art was a big influence on her. “Every bowl we eat is made by him: nature-related ceramics, natural colors and materials. Therefore, I think our daily life is full of this very clean, modern, but at the same time very warm aesthetic, which is very important for me. Big impact.”
Early influences from minimalist contemporary art are often woven into Lin’s compositions and objects. From her sundial-inspired model of the 1987 Alabama Civil Rights Memorial to drawings for large-scale architectural and civic projects, such as the renovation of the historic 1903 Smith College Library building in Northampton, Massachusetts, visitors to the exhibition can experience Lin’s deep-seated expressions of local techniques.
Lin recalls the empowerment tools she received from her parents’ influence, from her father, a superpower of faith, and from her mother, who encouraged her to pursue her passions. According to her, this is a rare gift for young women.
“In particular, my mother gave me this real strength because a career was so important to her. She was a writer. She loved teaching and I really felt like it gave me that strength from day one,” Lin explained.
Julia Chan Lin, like her husband, is an artist and teacher. So when Lin got the opportunity to update her mother’s alma mater library, she felt the architectural design was close to home.
“You rarely get to take it home,” Lin said after the Smith Nelson Library reopened in 2021.
The photographs in the exhibition depict the library’s multi-level building, which is made up of a mixture of local stone, glass, metal and wood, complementing the campus’ masonry heritage.
In addition to drawing inspiration from her family’s creative heritage going back to her aunt, world-famous poet Lin Huiyin, Maya Lin also credits her with spending time playing outdoors while exploring the southeast Ohio area.
The joys she found in the ridges, streams, forests, and hills behind her home in Ohio filled her entire childhood.
“In terms of art, I can go inside my head and do whatever I want and be completely liberated. It goes back to my roots in Athens, Ohio, my roots in nature and how I feel connected to my surroundings. to be inspired by the natural world and reflect that beauty to other people,” Lin said in a video interview.
Many of her models and designs convey the interconnected elements of nature, wildlife, climate and art, some of which are featured in the exhibition.
Lin’s meticulously crafted sculpture of a small silver deer from 1976 complements Lyn’s 1993 photograph of Groundswell, created in Ohio, in which she chose 45 tons of recycled broken safety glass because of its color. A crease in a field in New Zealand and photographs of Linh’s interpretation of the Hudson River using steel. Each is an outstanding example of the environmentally conscious work Lin has worked hard to create.
Lin said she developed a passion for environmental protection at an early age, which is why she made a commitment to build a monument to Mother Nature.
Now that promise is blossoming in what Moss calls Ringling’s latest environmental memorial: a science-based series called “What’s Missing?”
This multi-page climate change multimedia project is an interactive part of the exhibition where visitors can record memories of special places lost due to environmental damage and place them on vinyl cards.
“She was very interested in collecting data, but then also provided information on what we can do to change our lifestyle and stop environmental damage,” Moss continued. “Like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Civil Rights Memorial, she made a personal connection through empathy, and she made this reminder card for us to remember.”
According to Frida Lee Mok, director of the award-winning 1994 documentary Maya Lin: Powerful Clear Vision, Lin’s designs are beautiful and striking, and each of Lin’s work demonstrates extreme sensitivity to context and natural surroundings.
“She’s just amazing and when you think about what she’s doing, she does it quietly and in her own way,” Mock said. “She is not looking for attention, but at the same time, people come to her because they know that she will take advantage of the opportunity and the talent, the talent that she has, and from what I have seen, we have all seen. , it will be amazing. .
Among those who came to see her was former President Barack Obama, who commissioned Lean earlier this year to carve an art installation, Seeing Through the Universe, for the gardens of his Chicago Presidential Library and Museum. The work is dedicated to his mother, Ann Dunham. Lean’s installation, a fountain at the center of the Garden of Tranquility, “will capture [my mother] as much as anything else,” Obama said, another human, sensitive, and natural creation by the renowned artist.
A Lifetime: The Maya Forest will open to the public at the National Portrait Gallery on April 16, 2023.
Briana A. Thomas is a Washington, D.C.-based historian, journalist, and tour guide specializing in African-American studies. She is the author of Black Broadway, a black history book in Washington, D.C.
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Post time: Dec-28-2022
