She's Body (切肤之上)

The new creations for the ‘ She’s Body’ series, unlike Fanglu's earlier works made of undyed fabric, are submerged in color—crimson red, brilliant yellow, violet, or purple. Some works feature currents of greens, yellows, and purples flowing effortlessly one into the other.

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An exuberant carnival of colors, shapes, knobs, and bulges. Myriads of them seem to be repeating themselves, and yet no two are alike. They grow and sprawl like cell division, corals, seashells, jellyfish with short tentacles and longer stinging arms. Lin’s colorful cotton membrane of twirls and pleats seems to transport us to the magnificent underwater world, the womb and heart of the planet where life started to pulsate eons of years ago. Taking us on a deep dive into the ocean, she likens the underwater world to the strong currents of blood that run through women’s bodies, to the streams of feminine energy that are life-giving. The She’s Body series is an initiation that rises out of women’s innate psychology and physicality, out of the powerful feminine principles that stand behind the matrix of creation, that births children, shapes lands, tends to our homes, protects, encourages, and forgives, builds, instills hope, makes new, breathes fresh starts, gives grace, bears burdens, sacrifices and lives in a way that heals.

The brilliant red that dominates this series comes to represent blood and life, blood as the energy of life that streams through the arteries of the body delivering oxygen and nutrients to its extremities. The yellows, purples, and violet symbolize human flesh and skin that are perfect in their imperfections. Bruised and wounded, the female flesh, both figuratively and literally, carries marks of collective negligence and abuse through centuries of human civilization, yet it is strong enough to heal and recover over and over again. “Within these flesh-toned undulations, akin to life’s very pulse, courses an unwavering stream of feminine vitality—an energy that animates the very essence of existence,” reflects the artist.

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Women as no others, from their very flesh and blood and from the constant cycles of filling and emptying the red vessel in their abdomens, understand physically, emotionally, and spiritually that the brightest stars fade, zeniths expire, and what is left is reborn in unexpected ways, only to reduce back to nothing, and yet be reconceived again in full glory. These cycles that run in and through women run through Her Majesty Mother Nature as well. By directing the spotlight back on the feminine vitality and resilience and by claiming the respect it deserves, through her work Lin heals a much bigger self-inflicted wound of humanity, the one of losing touch with the seasons and cycles of nature, the wound of losing relationships with lands, oceans, and all other non-human creatures that inhabit the planet together with us. Finally, in its deepest sense, Lin’s work heals the wound of losing touch with ourselves living in our bodies, fully present in time.

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Coming across Lin’s ‘She’s Body’ series is an incredibly visceral experience. The intense physicality of her work is indisputable. The energy she imbues them with is almost palpable. Peculiar forms of nature-informed abstractions respond to our presence. The texture of the surfaces and stimulating colors almost demand skin-to-skin contact. It is as if the artist entices you to experience the work through the fibers of your body, and through this connection she hopes to lead you back to yourself, the world within, and, inevitably, to a more sincere world around you.

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