Maya Lin

Maya Lin: Here and There

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Apr 26, 2013 – Jun 22, 2013, at Pace Gallery, in New York (USA)

New work by Maya Lin exploring her longtime interest in environmental issues, including rising currents and climate change, and expanding her engagement with natural and geographic forms.Click here for the gallery’s website

An article on the exhibition was published in the New York Times (on April 25th):

“…in a sense, Hurricane Sandy also woke up Ms. Lin. Soon after the floodwaters receded, she decided she wanted her latest show at Pace — her first conceived specifically for a commercial gallery — to fix on Manhattan and its surrounding landscape, environmental history and waterways.“I really wanted people to understand more about literally what’s right under their feet,” she said. “I wanted to really focus on revealing aspects of New York, which we might not be thinking about from a natural, topographic, environmental point of view.”

Read the full article here, by Carol Kino.

Her website, mentioned below, is well worth visiting:

“…the show’s most unexpected aspect is a space devoted to her Web site What Is Missing?(whatismissing.net), begun in 2011 as part of a larger memorial to vanishing species and habitats worldwide. “I see it as a guerilla artwork,” she said.”

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Is something missing from Maya Lin’s What Is Missing?

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Maya Lin, the artist most famous for creating the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, a piece of public work that cut deep in the American psyche, unveiled another memorial last week in San Francisco. What is missing? is a homage to extinct species.

In her artists’ statement she says:

What is missing? is a wake up call and a call to action, showing what is being done throughout the field of conservation and also what individuals can do in their everyday lives to make a difference in habitat and species protection.

What is missing? will make the critical link between global warming concerns and habitat protection: if 20% of global warming emissions are caused by deforestation then What is missing? will integrally connect these issues, asking the question:

Can we save two birds with one tree?

I’m sorry. It may be that last coy bon mot that pushed me over the line but…  if any piece of work epitomises something Michaela Crimmin was talking about recently when she wrote,“Art is not going to combat climate change by didacticism of preaching”, it’s Lin’s giant speaking tube.

Perhaps the piece doesn’t have the right impact when viewed via YouTube, but to my eyes, Lin’s work does the opposite of  creating connections between environment and global warming, as she claims.  Instead, Lin’s megaphone appears to reduce the natural world to something exotic and far-away at the pointy end of a tube.

I’m right, aren’t I?

www.maylin.com
www.whatismissing.net

EDIT. I’ve just noticed in a review of the work in the SF Chronicle that children can enter the tube – if they take their shoes off. That makes it even worse, somehow.

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology