Talisman

Candice Lin
Talisman, 2007
Board, paper, ink, pencil, thread
Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art Collection
Gift of Marcus Civin
2020.02

Candice Lin is possibly best known for her large – sometimes room-sized – installations that illustrate overlooked aspects of worldwide colonial history through a radical array of materials including urine, silkworms, clocks, and dirt. Like most artists, she continues to be active even when she is not making work directly intended for museums or gallery shows. This work was a gift for one of her collaborators, Marcus Civin. Although they are not part of her official oeuvre we can see parallel ideas running between the different bodies of work, from monstrous human figures similar to those in her formal drawings such as Preparation for a Re-Gendered Society (2009) and Sycorax’s Collections (Happiness) (2011), to invented ethnographies that suggests a sympathetic link to her large-scale reimaginings of indigenous histories. Just as Lin concerns herself with the parts of history that official records neglect, so objects like these can remind us that every artist’s life contains works that remain off the record. (DKS)

To watch our Virtual Tour of this piece, please click on the following link: Barrick Museum of Art Virtual Tour - Candice Lin.