The Fourth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

Prigioni 6. 70-77.4.2007 2001 Pentalite paint on wood Courtesy: The artist and Taipei Fine Arts Museum THE FABRIC OF MEMORY Lin began working with Taiwanese fabrics in 1996, having returned to Taipei three years earlier after completing his high– school and tertiary education in the United States. Dismayed by local political squabbling in his home town, Lin immersed himself in a private, domestic life. Painting still lifes at home, he was soon intrigued by the cotton pillowcases made by his wife. In turn, these remnants of the domestic world were adopted and amplified by the artist as an avenue through which he could explore what it meant to be 'home'. Everyday fabrics, in constant use in bedrooms and living rooms, might be seen as silent embodiments of memory, as continuous filaments of private history. The artist borrows from textiles found in most Taiwanese homes a decade ago. These are now slowly fading from daily use, being considered a little old-fashioned and kitsch. The stories embedded in these materials are invisibly recorded as intangible evocations of intimate life rather than as formal documents of events articulated through language. By referencing these fabrics and the inherited sensibilities that surround them, Lin tracks through temporal and spatial realms as he borrows specific cultural nuances and iconographies that remain as traces within these cloths. 72 APT2002 Patterned textiles have a long history in the region .The imagery of commercially printed fabrics in Taiwan can be traced back to the fine silk tapestries ('cut silk') of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), which feature exquisite configurations of birds and flowers in opulent colours. These in turn reference the tapestries from the Song Dynasty (960-1279) which was the golden age of the art form in China. The tradition of silk embroidery is even older, the earliest surviving evidence having been excavated from a tomb of the Warring States period (403-221 BC) in the southern Hunan province. Lin salvages images rendered virtually invisible by their daily use within the home, and by their association with function and craft. Cultural lineage, spheres of overt and subtle influence and hierarchies of power are gently provoked from the personal perspective of the artist's own life, family and home. Lin explains: I often spent time in the countryside with my grandfather when I was young. I still remember such textiles being used for bedding as women's dowry; to me they also mark an age when Taiwan was transferring from handcrafted modes of production to industrial production, from rural to urban.'