Series: Treading on Thin Ice
Exhibition Title: Treading on Thin Ice
Year: 2022
Medium: installation | video projections, sound, artificial grass, concrete pavers, resin, pigment, epoxy, steel, mirror-finished plexiglass, palm fronds
Dimension: approx. 5,000 sq ft
Venue: Locust Projects, Miami, FL
Read the full description in Press Release
Treading on Thin Ice contemplates human conditions under progressive catastrophes resulting from social issues and climate change. By employing the concept of landscape as traces of human history as a battleground and an extension of the human body, I present a post-landscape where nature, human activities, and materiality intersect. By utilizing body imagery as a receiver and reflector, I explore using our physical bodies as vehicles for reconstructing the events and environments to which we have directly or indirectly been exposed. The project integrates sculpture, video projections, and sound into a large site-specific installation.
In the installation at Locust Projects, I presented a manmade natural environment to explore adaptation, the psychological space, and subtle changes in our everyday lives under the inevitable—our changing environment. Manipulating our senses of familiar and unfamiliar, the center of the exhibition is a backyard-like installation that situates my sculptures with concrete pavers and artificial grass, which are commonly used for patios in Florida. The main video is projected onto a large screen above a blue-mirrored plexiglas that symbolizes a backyard swimming pool.
With footage that includes natural and artificial landscapes, an interview at a genetic laboratory, a scene with actors and a scenic panorama captured on Mars, the video creates a cross-path dialogue exploring our existence and the connections among change, adaptation, hope, human behavior, and emotions. The single-shot improvised acting by two actors, An-Ru Chu and Christopher J. Staley, explores our current moments and the fine line between genuine human reaction and sophisticated acting, based on the concepts found in Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days and Waiting for Godot. An interview with scientist Dave Jackson about his blue-sky research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York provides a neutral explanation of why artificial changes and genetic exploration have become inevitable and reflects the parallel path that both artists and scientists pursue to prove a concept. I also explore the boundary between artificial, natural, and imagined landscape through the eye of a digital camera while visiting a Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Florida.
I collaborated with Berlin-based sound artist Cedrik Fermont and new media artist Chun-Li Wang on the soundtrack and 3D animations for the video. Fermont created sound and music that respond to the imagery and channel the emotions of the video. Wang animated both 3D patterns to visualize Lin’s concepts and an imagined landscape based on images of a collapsing iceberg, Mars (by NASA), and the online texture library Megascans.
The sculptures are inspired by scholar’s rocks, naturally occurring stones of various colors and abstract shapes that were famously admired by Chinese scholars during earlier centuries. These represent a micro landscape that allows for contemplating our current world. The sculptures appear deformed by outer forces and represent a combination of the human body, animals, and rock with no specific contoured reference.
Treading on Thin Ice premieres at Locust Projects and will continue its expedition with The Arctic Circle program in Svalbard, Norway in 2022 and 2024. The exhibition was commissioned by Locust Projects, and supported, in part, by the National Culture and Arts Foundation of Taiwan and The Puffin Foundation.
Artist: Jia-Jen Lin
Video Production Advisory: Manuel Molina Martagon
Videography: Manuel Molina Martagon/ Aung Moe Win/ Jia-Jen Lin
Video Editing: Jia-Jen Lin
Performance: An-Ru Chu/ Christopher J. Staley
Sound Design: Cedrik Fermont
Generative Visual: Chun-Li Wang
Photography(production): Kuo-Heng Huang
Special thanks to Professor Dave Jackson at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
Photograph (cover, 3,6-12) by Zachary Balber
Photograph (1,2,4,5) by Alejandro Chavarria of World Red Eye
