Tiffany Lin: PROOF

The Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art and the Womxn of Color Arts Festival are proud to present PROOF, a solo exhibition by the Las Vegas-based artist Tiffany Lin. PROOF examines displaced sites of learning through an interactive installation that invites visitors to respond to an ever-changing series of questions written on a classroom chalkboard. Through a surrealist mise-en-scene that expands the onsite presentation to engage the online world of social media, PROOF addresses newfound constraints of remote study and instruction, which are both collapsed and expanded in the digital sphere. Lin’s installation focuses on the multitude of ways in which COVID-19 has forced educators to radically reimagine sites of learning, as interactions become increasingly facilitated by screen-based media.

“As remote learning becomes the new temporary reality, the role of the internet as an unregulated catalyst of misinformation emerges to the foreground,” she says. “Its omnipresence has contributed to the rapid proliferation of conspiracy theories and general fear-mongering, fueling the historical distrust of institutions and destabilizing foundational ideas of truth. The internet has also broadly enabled the damaging impacts of monetized, targeted digital media that reinforces users’ existing views, and obscures diverse perspectives. The digitally reimagined classroom then becomes an increasingly important intervention as one of the last platforms for critical, independent thought and peer collaboration despite personal differences.”

PROOF invites viewers to solve and propose new solutions to this conundrum through poetic equations that will rotate biweekly. Submissions can be made in person at the Marjorie Barrick Museum or via social media (@unlvmuseum). Will the internet solve the internet?

Tiffany Lin is a visual artist whose work examines how power is expressed in the subtext of American vernacular. Through a multidisciplinary practice that spans drawing, writing, and performance, she demonstrates how language and data are deployed tactically to reify colonial legacies and state power. Utilizing both creative and sociological methods, she combines participatory action, interviews, and social theory to support her claim that desire and belonging in the United States are mediated by external politics.
Lin holds an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Illustration Practice and a BA in Gender & Women's Studies and Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. She currently lives and works in Las Vegas where she joins the Department of Art at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas as a Visiting Assistant Professor.

Support for this exhibition is provided by the WESTAF Regional Arts Resilience Fund, a relief grant developed in partnership with The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support arts organizations in the 13-state western region during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additional programs are funded in part with support from Nevada Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

-DK Sole, Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art (January 11, 2021)

Digital Catalog for PROOF

Interview by UNLV News Center with Tiffany Lin