18th Street Arts Center is pleased to present a new exhibition by Taiwan-based artist Esther Lin, opening December 6 at 6 PM at our campus in the Santa Monica Airport. Lin’s practice explores the modern systems in which we live, whether physical or psychological. The exhibition Revolving Corridor (n.) evokes imaginary alternative spaces through objects, videos, audio samples, lights, and text combined in an installation, which showcases her most recent artworks. The title refers to sushi corridor restaurants where diners create their own physical space through time while waiting for food to pass. A sushi corridor is an in-between space that allows people to connect while preserving a sense of personal psychological space. In a similar way, Lin generates a space for people to move along the long South Gallery so that they may explore the transitional zones between languages and actions in daily life as they walk from one work to the other. By acknowledging the gallery as a space that challenges the traditional white cube due to its particular elongated and vaulted architecture and the continuous movement of artists accessing their studios, Lin invites viewers to move at their own pace to dialogue with each of her works and create an insightful territory of their own. Inspired by everyday details, Esther utilizes previous works created in various cities around the world (London, Taipei, Los Angeles) to inspire conversation about the past, the present, and the future by addressing the movement of time and human desire as driving forces behind civilizations.
The exhibition includes a three channel video accompanied by digital printed works, a lighting installation and samples of a book, printed receipts, images and text along with sound, and objects in various materials (such as glass and pigments).
In conjunction with the opening of Revolving Corridor (n.) on December 6 from 6-8 PM, local artists will open their studios in the Airport Hangar and studio tours will be offered to visitors throughout the event. They include M. Susan Broussard, Susie McKay Krieser, Gregg Chadwick, Eric Merola, and more. Please check 18thstreet.org/calendar for more details about the exhibition and reception.
Esther Lin’s exhibition and three-month Artist Residency is generously supported by the Ministry of Culture, Taiwan and Taiwan Academy.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Esther Lin is an interdisciplinary artist based in Taipei, Taiwan. Her current practice focuses on connecting experimental narratives between literature and installation, and their organic interaction with society. She is good at telling stories with mixed media of objects, texts and images, and her practice intends to capture phases of transition within the modern daily system and to explore the transformation and fluidity of identity and value. Her research and interests include the production of materials in relation to memory, the spatiality of time, duration and process in space, and the relationship between object and documentation. She believes that art practice should always synchronize with real life, further to explore the boundaries of reality and imagination.
She has participated in several international group exhibitions and artist-in-residency programs in Okinawa, Tokyo, Taipei, and London. Selected exhibitions include Ulaanbaatar International Media Arts Festival, Mongolia (2019); Mabuni Peace Project, Okinawa (2019); Indicate Injustice: Proposals for Visual Identity and Memorial Object of Monuments of Injustice, National Human Rights Museum, Taiwan (2018); Sisyphus Version 20.18, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan (2018); On the Poetic of Islands, Pingtung Art Museum, Taiwan (2016); and Boundaries, Archipelago Magazine III, London (2015). She received the Judge’s Award for the Taipei Arts Awards (2015) and was invited by Sumida Studio Network Artist-in-residency program, Tokyo (2017). Lin completed her BFA at the National Taiwan Normal University (2013) and she holds an MFA from Goldsmiths, University of London (2016).
ABOUT 18TH STREET ARTS CENTER
Celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2018-2019, 18th Street Arts Center is one of the top 20 artist residency programs in the US, and the largest in Southern California. Conceived as a radical think tank in the shape of an artist community, 18th Street supports artists from around the globe to imagine, research, and develop significant, meaningful new artworks and share them with the public. We strive to provide artists the space and time to take risks, to foster the ideal environment for artists and the public to directly engage, and to create experiences and partnerships that foster positive social change.