Candice Lin: A materialist history of contagion

×

Expand

Candice Lin, "System for a Stain," 2016

wood, glass jars, cochineal, poppy seeds, metal castings, water, tea, sugar, copper still, hot plate, ceramic vessels, mortar and pestle, Thames mud, jar, microbial mud battery, vinyl floor. Dimensions variable. Commissioned by Gasworks. Courtesy the artist and François Ghebaly, Los Angeles. Photo by Andy Keate.

Exhibition Tours: October 16 and December 4

Banff Gallery Hops: September 28, October 26, November 16 and December 7

Art Break: November 13 

A materialist history of contagion by Candice Lin traces the material history of colours and their global circulation as exotic commodities entwined with the legacies of plantation economies and colonial expansion. Reflecting on how culturally-rooted notions of purity and contamination animate the historic trade and valuation of goods prized for their colour, Lin’s research delves into these materials’ connection to the latter developments of nineteenth-century Asian contract labour, agribusiness, and the use of bone charcoal in refining sugar.