{{Short description|Chinese installation artist and textile designer}} {{Notability|Bio|date=August 2024}}{{Use mdy dates|date=August 2021}} {{Infobox artist | name = Lin Tianmiao | native_name = 林天苗 | native_name_lang = zh | image = Lin Tianmiao, studio tour Beijing 6 July 2015.jpg | image_size = | alt = | caption = Lin Tianmiao, studio tour Beijing, July 2015 | birth_date = 1961 | birth_place = Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, China | death_date = | death_place = | known_for = sculpture, mixed media | notable_works = | website = {{URL|lintianmiao.com}} }} '''Lin Tianmiao''' ({{lang-zh|林天苗|s=林天苗|t=|p=Lín tīan míao}}; born 1961) is a contemporary Chinese installation artist and textile designer. She sometimes makes use of everyday objects.<ref name=":0">''Suzuki, Sarah (2010). "Lin Tianmiao". Modern Women: Women Artists at the Museum of Modern Art. New York: Museum of Modern Art. pp. 405–406. {{ISBN|978-0-87070-771-1}}.''</ref>
== Life ==
Lin Tianmiao was born in 1961 in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, China. Her father was an ink painter and master calligrapher<ref name=":1">''Pollack, Barbara (October 2012). "Wrap Artist" (PDF). ARTnews. pp. 86–93.''</ref> and her mother studied and taught traditional dance.<ref name=":0" /> She received a BFA from Capital Normal University in 1961, and later studied at the Art Students League in New York City in 1989.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Caruso|first=Hwa Young|date=June 1, 2013|title=Lin Tianmiao: A contemporary Chinese Woman Artist|journal=International Journal of Multicultural Education|volume=15|doi=10.18251/ijme.v15i1.721 |s2cid=143240477 |doi-access=free}}</ref>
She lived in Brooklyn from 1988<ref name=":1" /> to 1994. She returned to Beijing in 1995 and converted her home into an open studio which was an important venue for Apartment Art.<ref name=":0" /> She is married to Wang Gongxin,<ref name=":0" /> who is a video artist, and together they have a son, Shaun.<ref name=":1" /> She has said that life's experience is constantly changing, and the way her works are presented is also constantly changing.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Lin|first=Tianmiao|title=Non Zero|url=https://opac.otis.edu:8443/lib/item?id=chamo:121171&fromLocationLink=false&theme=otis}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Caruso |first=Dr Hwa Young |date=2013-04-11 |title=Art Review: Lin Tianmiao: A Contemporary Chinese Woman Artist |url=https://ijme-journal.org/index.php/ijme/article/view/721 |journal=International Journal of Multicultural Education |language=en |volume=15 |issue=1 |doi=10.18251/ijme.v15i1.721 |issn=1934-5267|doi-access=free }}</ref>
== Work ==
Lin started her career as a textile designer and used the skills she had learned in her later work.{{citation needed|date=August 2021}} She changed from textile design to art because she felt like design was limiting her creativity and suppressing her expression.<ref name=":3">Wang, Peggy. 2012. "Subversion, culture shock, "Women's Art": an interview with Lin Tianmiao". ''n.paradoxa.'' 2012: 22-31.</ref> Lin and her husband participated in the Beijing Young Artists' Painting Society, which was contiguous with the '85 Art New Wave Movement.<ref name=":3" /> Her work is multifaceted. She sees it as representing both tradition and newness.<ref name=":3" /> She co-founded the Loft New Media Art Center in 2001.<ref name=":0" />
In the 1990s Lin created works with materials of contrasting textures,<ref name=":0" /> often using undyed cotton thread. She has also worked in other media such as sculpture, photography, video and mixed media.<ref name=rockbund/> An early work, ''The Proliferation of Thread Winding'' (1995), included 20,000 balls of thread attached with needles to a rice paper-covered iron bed.<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://asiasociety.org/new-york/exhibitions/bound-unbound-lin-tianmiao-0#abouttheartist|title=Bound Unbound: Lin Tianmiao|website=Asia Society|date=September 7, 2012 |access-date=March 3, 2016}}</ref> In 2012, she made a series of works using a wooden frame, threads and synthetic bones; ''Minty Blue'' (2012) and ''Duckling Yellow'' (2012) were two works in the series.<ref name=rockbund/>
At the 2002 Shanghai Biennale she and her husband collaborated on ''Here or There''; she described the collaboration as "unspeakable", and resolved to "never cooperate anymore."<ref>{{Cite web|last=Hao|first=He|date=2014|title=A Designer's Decade of Contemporary Art in China : The Book Designs of He Hao|url=https://opac.otis.edu:8443/lib/item?id=chamo:682008&fromLocationLink=false&theme=otis}}</ref> She had a 2006 residency at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute where she experimented with paper media and printmaking.<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{Cite web |last=Archive |first=Asia Art |title=Focus: On Paper |url=https://aaa.org.hk/en/collections/search/library/focus-on-paper/search/collection-type:library-collection--content-type:artist-monograph--actors-id:274/page/1 |access-date=2024-03-02 |website=aaa.org.hk |language=en}}</ref> Since the mid-1990s, her works have been included in every major international museum show on Chinese contemporary art.<ref name=":1" />
She had her solo exhibition ''Gazing Back: The Art of Lin Tianmiao'', 對視——林天苗藝術展 as part of the 'Shanghai Pujiang OCT Ten-Year Public Art Project · 2009'. It includes three groups of works, ''Badges'', ''Advent'' and ''Gazing Back'', which were all created especially for this public art project.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Archive |first=Asia Art |title=Gazing Back: The Art of Lin Tianmiao |url=https://aaa.org.hk/en/collections/search/library/gazing-back-the-art-of-lin-tianmiao/search/collection-type:library-collection--content-type:artist-monograph--actors-id:274/page/1 |access-date=2024-03-02 |website=aaa.org.hk |language=en}}</ref>
In 2017, her show at Galerie Lelong in New York exhibited her work ''Protruding Patterns'' (2014)'','' which encouraged visitors to walk over her work - an installation made entirely of antique carpets. The carpets were embroidered with dozens of words about women in Chinese, English, French and other tongues - a selection of approximately 2,000 phrases she had collected over a period of more than five years.<ref name=":2">{{Cite web |last=Cascone |first=Sarah |date=2017-10-16 |title=This Artist Gathered 2,000 Words for Women—and Now, She Wants You to Walk All Over Them |url=https://news.artnet.com/art-world/lin-tianmiao-carpet-galerie-lelong-1113395 |access-date=2024-03-02 |website=Artnet News |language=en-US}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Panicelli |first=Ida |date=2017-12-01 |title=Lin Tianmiao |url=https://www.artforum.com/events/lin-tianmiao-3-236709/ |access-date=2024-03-02 |website=Artforum |language=en-US}}</ref>
===Feminist themes===
Lin's work often deals with themes traditionally applicable to women. With its focus on the manifestations of domesticity and motherhood, critics have compared her work to Western feminist art, she has rejected that characterization.<ref name=":0" /><ref>1. ''Smith, Karen (October 2012). "Woven Labors" (PDF). Art in America: 138–144. I looked in many books and catalogues about female artists to see if this was true but came to the conclusion that it was not. I had always judged life from my own experience as a person, who just happened to be a woman.''</ref>
“My art is an expression of my life, as an artist, as a Chinese, and I suppose, as a woman,” she responded to the art world’s routine characterization of her as a “Chinese woman artist.”¹ She uncouples these terms as a reminder to art critics and art historians that her work transcends such an essentializing label.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Wang |first=Peggy |title=The Future History of Contemporary Chinese Art |publisher=University of Minnesota Press |year=2020}}</ref> She views that the label feminisim restricts the interpretation of her works, and how she thinks about them.<ref name=":2" />
==List of selected artworks and exhibitions== * ''The Proliferation of Thread Winding'', 1995, Asia Society Museum, New York, 2012 * ''Bound and Unbound'', Art Museum of China Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China, 1997 * ''Focus on Paper'', Singapore Tyler Print Institute, Singapore, 2007 * ''Mother's!!!'', 2008, Asia Society Museum, New York, 2012 * ''More or Less the Same'', 2011, Asia Society Museum, New York, 2012 * ''Protruding Patterns'', 2014, Galerie Lelong & Co, New York, 2017<ref name=":2" /> * ''Systems'', Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, China, 2018<ref name=rockbund>{{Cite web|url=http://www.rockbundartmuseum.org/en/exhibition/overview/955cqsr|title=Lin Tianmiao: Systems|publisher=Rockbund Art Museum|website=|access-date=November 27, 2018}}</ref>
== References == {{reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Lin, Tianmiao}} Category:1961 births Category:Living people Category:20th-century Chinese women artists Category:20th-century Chinese artists Category:21st-century Chinese women artists Category:21st-century Chinese artists Category:Artists from Shanxi Category:Chinese installation artists Category:People from Taiyuan Category:Textile designers Category:Women installation artists