Nancy P. Lin is a Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow and from September 2024 will be Assistant Professor of History of Art and Visual Studies at Cornell University. Her research considers modern and contemporary Chinese art and architecture from a transregional perspective. Her current book project focuses on the intersection between art and urbanism in examining locally situated, yet globally oriented site-based art practices in China. Address: Ithaca, New York
This extended catalogue entry examines the artist Zhang Huan’s innovative use of incense ash in p... more This extended catalogue entry examines the artist Zhang Huan’s innovative use of incense ash in paintings and sculptures since the early 2000s.
The Allure of Matter: Material Art from China, 2019
This extended catalogue entry examines the artist Song Dong’s long-standing experiments with wate... more This extended catalogue entry examines the artist Song Dong’s long-standing experiments with water as an artistic material.
The environmental art project, Keepers of the Waters, organized by the American artist Betsy Damo... more The environmental art project, Keepers of the Waters, organized by the American artist Betsy Damon, invited artists from the United States and China to create artworks in and around a polluted urban river in Chengdu in 1995 and again in Lhasa, Tibet the following summer. The site-specific event occurred outdoors-outside institutional spaces of art-and showcased experimental performance and installation, formats that had previously been excluded from state-run museums in China due to state censorship. Although recent scholarship has examined socially engaged projects of the early 2000s that drew from global trends of social activism, relational aesthetics, and site-specificity, little work has been done on this nascent moment in the 1990s when Chinese artists began to draw connections between going outdoors, working in a site-specific manner, and advancing broader social commitments through their art. This study examines Keepers as a test site for a newly developing xianchang (on-site) aesthetic based on outdoor, site-specific engagements with social spaces. By situating Keepers within the specific historic concerns of the mid-1990s, I suspend the overly robust interpretive frameworks around art activism to uncover the nuanced ways in which xianchang art operated. As I demonstrate, the tensions and contradictions surrounding xianchang art challenge imported models on art's social efficacy and continue to inform contemporary art practices in China into the twenty-first century.
Visual Arts, Representations and Interventions in Contemporary China: Urbanized Interface, 2018
The Guangzhou-based urban artworks of Big Tail Elephant Working Group (大尾象工作组), comprised of the ... more The Guangzhou-based urban artworks of Big Tail Elephant Working Group (大尾象工作组), comprised of the artists Lin Yilin, Chen Shaoxiong, Liang Juhui, and Xu Tan, represents one of the earliest sustained site-specific art practices in China in the 1990s. Examining their works in relation to the changing socio-economic and physical terrain of Guangzhou, this chapter develops the term ‘urban insertion’ to describe their unique engagement with the urban environment. A method of working that appropriates rather than intervenes confrontationally in the structures of the city, their ‘urban insertions’ embedded themselves within the city to critically probe its material conditions. This distinct site-based urban practice opened up new possibilities for Chinese contemporary art and revises our current understanding of site-specific urban interventions.
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Bachelor's Degree in Histor... more A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Bachelor's Degree in History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University.
This extended catalogue entry examines the artist Zhang Huan’s innovative use of incense ash in p... more This extended catalogue entry examines the artist Zhang Huan’s innovative use of incense ash in paintings and sculptures since the early 2000s.
The Allure of Matter: Material Art from China, 2019
This extended catalogue entry examines the artist Song Dong’s long-standing experiments with wate... more This extended catalogue entry examines the artist Song Dong’s long-standing experiments with water as an artistic material.
The environmental art project, Keepers of the Waters, organized by the American artist Betsy Damo... more The environmental art project, Keepers of the Waters, organized by the American artist Betsy Damon, invited artists from the United States and China to create artworks in and around a polluted urban river in Chengdu in 1995 and again in Lhasa, Tibet the following summer. The site-specific event occurred outdoors-outside institutional spaces of art-and showcased experimental performance and installation, formats that had previously been excluded from state-run museums in China due to state censorship. Although recent scholarship has examined socially engaged projects of the early 2000s that drew from global trends of social activism, relational aesthetics, and site-specificity, little work has been done on this nascent moment in the 1990s when Chinese artists began to draw connections between going outdoors, working in a site-specific manner, and advancing broader social commitments through their art. This study examines Keepers as a test site for a newly developing xianchang (on-site) aesthetic based on outdoor, site-specific engagements with social spaces. By situating Keepers within the specific historic concerns of the mid-1990s, I suspend the overly robust interpretive frameworks around art activism to uncover the nuanced ways in which xianchang art operated. As I demonstrate, the tensions and contradictions surrounding xianchang art challenge imported models on art's social efficacy and continue to inform contemporary art practices in China into the twenty-first century.
Visual Arts, Representations and Interventions in Contemporary China: Urbanized Interface, 2018
The Guangzhou-based urban artworks of Big Tail Elephant Working Group (大尾象工作组), comprised of the ... more The Guangzhou-based urban artworks of Big Tail Elephant Working Group (大尾象工作组), comprised of the artists Lin Yilin, Chen Shaoxiong, Liang Juhui, and Xu Tan, represents one of the earliest sustained site-specific art practices in China in the 1990s. Examining their works in relation to the changing socio-economic and physical terrain of Guangzhou, this chapter develops the term ‘urban insertion’ to describe their unique engagement with the urban environment. A method of working that appropriates rather than intervenes confrontationally in the structures of the city, their ‘urban insertions’ embedded themselves within the city to critically probe its material conditions. This distinct site-based urban practice opened up new possibilities for Chinese contemporary art and revises our current understanding of site-specific urban interventions.
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Bachelor's Degree in Histor... more A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Bachelor's Degree in History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University.
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Papers by Nancy P. Lin
Guangzhou, this chapter develops the term ‘urban insertion’ to describe their unique engagement with the urban environment. A method of working that appropriates rather than intervenes confrontationally in the structures of the city, their ‘urban insertions’ embedded themselves within the city to critically probe its material conditions. This distinct site-based urban practice opened up new possibilities for Chinese contemporary art and revises our current understanding of site-specific urban interventions.
Guangzhou, this chapter develops the term ‘urban insertion’ to describe their unique engagement with the urban environment. A method of working that appropriates rather than intervenes confrontationally in the structures of the city, their ‘urban insertions’ embedded themselves within the city to critically probe its material conditions. This distinct site-based urban practice opened up new possibilities for Chinese contemporary art and revises our current understanding of site-specific urban interventions.