HERE OR THERE N°6 LIN TIANMIAO

HERE? OR THERE? SERIES

In 2002 the visual artist Lin Tianmiao, whose works are mainly composed with thread and fabric, joined forces with her husband, the artist photographer and videographer Wang Gongxin to work on a common project on "opposites". For Wang Gongxin it is essentially "about swapping the usual elements of everyday life, to reverse fact and fiction, inside and outside, skin and organs ..."

The result of this research is a “global work” entitled Here? or There? and made up of several plastic elements. It brings together a collection of sculpture-dresses made by Lin Tianmiao on a palette of sober colors, films made by Wang Gongxin in which models dressed in these dresses stroll through traditional Chinese landscapes destroyed and abandoned and a series of various photographic shots which synthesize the essence of this unique common work.

The Artists LIN TIANMIAO & WANG GONGXIN 

Born in 1961 in Shaanxi Province, Lin Tianmiao is one of the best-known installation artists in China. All of Lin's work is based on a permanent questioning of the link between identity and social context, on the social role of each person and of the mother in particular, his own having taught him the art of working cotton very early on. She only trained in design before moving to New York where she lived for six years, and where she began her career as an artist.

As for WANG GONGXIN, born in Beijing in 1960, he received a classical training in oil painting in the realist-socialist style. He taught at Beijing University for five years and was invited in 1988 to the State University of New York as a scholar. Following the meeting of his wife, the artist LIN TIANMIAO, he made his first video work in 1993. Two years later, he returned to Beijing and became one of the major figures of the Chinese avant-garde movement with his friend and colleague ZHANG PEILI. He now lives and works with his wife in Beijing.

More about the artist, click here!