On the Tracks of Canton Express: Interview with Lin Yilin

Piles of gray concrete bricks and six television sets playing grainy footage of what appear to be a collection of performances sit atop the bare-bone structure of a steel bunk bed in one corner of M+’s exhibition “Canton Express,” a 2017 iteration of the project originally presented as part of the exhibition “Zone of Urgency,” which was curated by Hou Hanru for the 2003 edition of the Venice Biennale. The work, Hotbed (2003), donated to M+ by prominent Chinese collector Guan Yi in 2013, is a combination of installation and performance, two common tropes in the practice of Guangzhou-born, New York and Beijing-based artist Lin Yilin. 

Having grown up in Yangjiang, part of the western Pearl River Delta region, Lin, like many of the artists featured in “Canton Express,” was concerned with the rapid urban development of the area in the 1980s. This shared concern led to the formation of the Big Tail Elephants, a four-piece artist group that Lin co-founded in 1990 shortly after his graduation from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, together with Chen Shaoxiong and Liang Juhui. The three were later joined by Xu Tan in 1992. Lin had met Chen and Liang through his affiliation with the Southern Artists Salon, an experimental, avant-garde group often associated with ’85 New Wave. Lin’s radical works, made internationally prominent in part by “Zone of Urgency,” continue to be frequently displayed on the biennale circuit. In an interview with ArtAsiaPacific, Lin discusses his practice, and his work in “Canton Express.”

Can you tell us more about your artwork in  “Canton Express,” presented at the M+ Pavilion?

This artwork, called Hotbed, was made specifically for the original “Canton Express” presented at the Venice Biennale in 2003. Back then, there were a lot of artists participating and not a lot of space; each artist was assigned a small cubicle. The whole exhibition had a layout designed to resemble a commercial street. I thought, the Venice Biennale is a good place to showcase my work, but with such a limited amount of space, what can I do? I decided it would be a good idea to assemble videos of my previous performances into an installation.

Is there any special meaning behind the use of a bed? I understand the televisions were to display the videos, and bricks are a material you often use, but what about the bed?

The bed is related to my experience growing up. These wooden bunk beds were the kind we always slept in when we were young. I lived in dorms while at university, and we slept in these kinds of beds then too. It embodies a lot of memories.

Why are bricks such a common material in your artwork?

Having studied art history, I was particularly interested in minimalism and the conceptual art of the 1960s, and bricks corresponded to that minimal form. Also, bricks are the foundation of architecture, which I was also very interested in during my studies. Coincidentally, when I started creating art, it was during the city’s urban renewal in the ’90s, which resulted in a lot of bricks being thrown away due to manual demolition. Some of them were transported to the countryside to build pigsties, while others were sold cheaply. I could get a whole truck of them for a few hundred dollars. I wanted to create large-scale artworks, but I didn’t have much money. A combination of these factors encouraged me to start using bricks as a material in my work.

There was another advantage: bricks liberated me from having to engage in laborious handcrafting. I majored in sculpture, and a lot of that involves using your hands to shape things, but bricks do not require that. That fit well with how I made my artworks—swiftly, as back then, there weren’t any regular exhibition venues, and I just rented places; we didn’t have studios either, so we had to create artworks in limited time frames. 

How do you think your work fits into the theme or the title of the exhibition “Canton Express”?

I think this artwork is related to Hou Hanru’s interest in the rapid changes in lifestyles in newly urbanized Asian cities, which he was particularly concerned about back in 2003. The artistic concepts of the works and the exhibition were naturally interlinked. I lived and created in Asia, and experienced the urbanization process firsthand. Hou was looking into the bigger picture of what the region symbolized from his perspective as a Guangzhou-born curator who was based in Paris at the time. The relationship between the artwork and the show was created organically, and we all worked towards a common goal.

There are six videos in Hotbed, one of which was filmed in Hong Kong in 1996. It was right before the handover in 1997. In the performance, you wrote something on a brick wall. What did you write and why?

I was already paying attention to the society and politics of Hong Kong before 1997. At that time, there were a lot of political activities and parties voicing their opinions on Hong Kong TV shows and on the news. There wasn’t anything like this before. Being able to voice political opinions was a very novel idea, especially to me, because this was not possible in mainland China. The relationship between the government and Hong Kong people differs greatly from its mainland counterpart, and I wanted to imbue my work with these sociopolitical factors. 

It has now been 20 years since Hong Kong’s handover to China. How do you feel, viewing this video after two decades? 

I think it is very meaningful. These sociopolitical elements, which are also found in my other work Shark Proof Web (1997), done in a swimming pool, are related to Hong Kong’s Basic Law. They are still relevant today.

What impacts do you think this show will have on its audience and the Hong Kong art scene?

I feel that it is still difficult to say, because Hong Kong has undergone many changes since the 1990s. I used to communicate with some artists from Hong Kong in private, but now I can’t even find them; I don’t know if they are still in the arts. The audience has changed a lot as well. Back then, art belonged to a small coterie, but it is now more open to the public, so art serves a more diverse function.

It’s hard to say what exactly “Canton Express” will bring to the audience, but I would say this show organized by M+ has marked differences from the original presentation in 2003—it’s more calm and undisturbed.  The Venice Biennale is such a huge show, and you tend to miss a lot of wonderful details. “Canton Express” was a small part within a colossal whole, but it is now an exhibition on its own, making it much more focused.

The context is also very different here. Hong Kong belongs to the Pearl River Delta region, and local audiences will find the subject matter in the show more familiar, and therefore may be more critical of it. In Venice, the distance is further, and for its audience, this would be an imagination of what’s happening in the East. There is still a chronological distance at M+, but the geological distance of the exhibition is removed.