Unexpected Satin
October 26, 2012
The room was entirely covered in satin…
After finding the corner building, I walked into the Asia Society and Museum expecting bronze sculptures and traditional buddhist temple interior items. The front desk was very nice to me, a charming elderly white man who spoke humorously and seemed very glad to see a college student appear at the museum, as if it was an uncommon occurrence.
I didn’t expect to walk up the stairs into the first exhibit and be told to put white wrappings on my feet. But the security guard was pretty nice to me, so I made light conversation with him while I mummified my shoes.
When I stepped into the exhibit, first thing I thought was of how creepily white the room looked. There was no trace of any color anywhere, except for a creepy gray-haired, headless sculpture of a woman sitting in front of a split mirror on the floor near the entrance. I looked up and there was a giant scuplture entirely made of satin thread draped spheres above a miniature scuplutre of a headless woman.
It was almost like a room straight out of a horror Japanese manga comic. Looking around the room more, I started to get a sense of how counter-traditional this room appeared to be. This artist Lin Tianmiao was clearly a little on the darker side, the exhibit Bound Unbound was not a joyful exhibit. It sobbed sadness.
The security guard told me that the artist was in a mid-life crisis when she was creating these pieces. It explained a lot, too bad I had already made my judgements before he said anything.
