Ling-lin Ku
Ling-lin Ku, a multimedia artist focusing on sculpture and installation, currently living and working in the United States. She uses digital fabrication and a wide range of materials to create daydream-like works that shuttle between physical objects and digital creation. Ku earned her BFA from the Department of Sculpture and Extended Media, Virginia Commonwealth University, USA (2016) and her MFA of Art and Art History (Studio Art Program) from the University of Texas at Austin, USA (2019).
Ku has received Seebacher Award for Fine Arts from American Austria Foundation and won the UMLAUF Prize Expanded in Austin, Texas, in 2019. Her recent solo and two-person exhibitions include "Play without Play" Wayfarers Gallery, Brooklyn, New York (2018), "Dead Warm," Sawyer Yards TANK Space, Houston, TX (2020), and "Off the Map," Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum, Austin, TX (2020).
- Location USA / Los Angeles
- Year of the Grant 2021
- Residency 18th Street Arts Center
- Work The Practice of Disguise
- Personal Website Ling-lin Ku's Personal Website
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most art institutions have replaced in-person gatherings or opening/closing events with online platforms. The 18th Street Arts Center also canceled its monthly communal meals. However, every Thursday at noon, the Creative Round Table was still held, with different artists hosting various talks. There were also video studio interviews with curators and artists, as well as outdoor documentary screenings.
The exhibition focuses on a theme that I have been contemplating for a long time: The Practice of Disguise. Deriving from the camouflage techniques of animals and plants in the wild, this concept leads viewers to think about the unseen and overlooked aspects of our surroundings, such as the homeless, immigrants, pollution, social media, and CCTV. The exhibition explores the power structure inherent in visibility and invisibility, offering a space for creative inquiry.
The exhibition space begins with a caterpillar’s perspective. The caterpillar crawls over a highway-like rack with homeless cocoons underneath, and then passes through an entire wall of high-resolution pixelated images on photo paper arranged in squares. In one of the pixels, I embedded a secret message (Where is Waldo). On the other side of the wall, there is a butterfly specimen with a design that represents "Chinese Taipei," in contrast with a video on the other end of the wall about the dead leaf butterfly. The video starts with an animated leaf being gradually consumed by a caterpillar in a whack-a-mole style. Then, the camera pulls back to reveal a static image of the dead leaf butterfly, interrupted by increasing glitches and jump cuts. This suggests the shift between mankind’s simple perspective and insects’ compound viewpoints.
The residency serves as an opportunity for me to finally transform my long-pondered ideas into physical works. Whether the outcome is satisfying is secondary. What matters most is that taking this first step allows me to adjust, improve, and explore related themes to enrich and deepen my practice.
Author: Ling-lin Ku
Edited: Brix