Lecture

For the Spring 2010 Visiting Artist Lecture series, Vera List Center Fellows Lin + Lam speak about their collaborative art practice of the past nine years. Organized by Coco Fusco, Chair of Fine Arts, the lecture is sponsored by the School of the Art, Media and Technology at Parsons The New School for Design.

Inspired by a particular site, historical incident, or political issue, Lin + Lam’s work emerges from the interrelation between current events and residues of the past. Recent projects have addressed the construction of national identities through propaganda and democratization, and the haunting of daily life by the specter of war, militarism, and socio-political inequities. Attentive to materiality, site, and the specificities of different mediums, their collaboration integrates their individual strengths and backgrounds.

Trained in architecture, H. Lan Thao Lam uses photography, sculpture, and installation to address social memories of time and place. Lana Lin’s interests extend from a tradition of critical cinema, raising questions about the inadequacies of translation and the politics of producing strangers. Their work has been exhibited at international venues including the New Museum, the Kitchen, the Queens Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA, and the 3rd Guangzhou Triennial, China. They are 2009-2010 Vera List Center Fellows and contributed to the center’s first book Considering Forgiveness (2009).