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Interview with Lin Tianmiao
Still from the Smart Museum's interview with Lin Tianmiao.

Lin Tianmiao 林天苗

Chinese, born 1961

Artist Profile

Since her early childhood, Lin Tianmiao has been fascinated with cotton thread. Her mother would tediously unravel the thread of the white cotton gloves given to workers in state-owned factories to make new clothes and mend others. Lin appropriated this domestic task in the early 1990s, wrapping hundreds of household objects in white thread.

For Lin, binding represents a form of corporal punishment that women experience in their daily housework and in domestic labor. In the work Day-Dreamer, included in this exhibition, Lin suspends hundreds of cotton threads along the outline of her self-portrait. The haunting silhouette suggests the impact of this labor-intensive process on her body.

Lin Tianmiao. Photo courtesy of the artist.
“I believe materials have properties, have genders; they can be distinguished between female and male, and often we can, through art, entirely change the identity of the material itself or change what the user adds to this material.”
—Lin Tianmiao 1

Footnotes

  • 1

    Interview with Lin Tianmiao, August 15, 2019, conducted by Nancy P. Lin, translated by Greg Young.

Works on View

Smart Museum of Art

Day-Dreamer, 2000

White cotton threads, white fabric, and digital photograph
149 5/8 x 78 3/4 x 47 1/4 in. (380 x 200 x 120 cm)

Collection of the artist

Lin Tianmiao, Day-Dreamer, 2000
Lin Tianmiao, Day-Dreamer, 2000. Installation view, The Allure of Matter: Material Art from China, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2019–20. Photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.
Lin Tianmiao, Day-Dreamer, 2000. Detail. Photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

Working Process

Lin Tianmiao unwinding thread for a work in Bound Unbound: Lin Tianmiao, Asia Society Museum, 2012-2013. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Lin Tianmiao unwinding thread for a work in Bound Unbound: Lin Tianmiao, Asia Society Museum, 2012–13. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Lin Tianmiao installing The Proliferation of Thread Winding (1995) for the exhibition The Civil Power, Minsheng Art Museum, 2015. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Lin Tianmiao installing The Proliferation of Thread Winding (1995) for the exhibition The Civil Power, Minsheng Art Museum, 2015. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Lin Tianmiao and a studio assistant installing The Proliferation of Thread Winding (1995) for the exhibition The Civil Power, Minsheng Art Museum, 2015. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Lin Tianmiao and a studio assistant installing The Proliferation of Thread Winding (1995) for the exhibition The Civil Power, Minsheng Art Museum, 2015. Photo courtesy of the artist.