标题: 梅尔-秦 艺术家 [打印本页] 作者: shiyi18 时间: 2022-2-24 03:12 标题: 梅尔-秦 艺术家 Mel Chin
Artist | Class of 2019
Harnessing the power of art to raise awareness of social concerns through a practice that defies categorization.
Portrait of Mel Chin
Title
Artist
Location
Egypt, North Carolina
Age
67 at time of award
Area of Focus
3-D Visual Art, Community/Social Practice
Website
melchin.org
Fundred Project
Social
Facebook
Instagram
Published September 25, 2019
ABOUT MEL'S WORK
Mel Chin is a category-defying artist whose practice calls attention to complex social and environmental issues. In an expansive body of work ranging from collages, sculptural objects, animated films, and video games to large-scale, collaboratively produced public installations, Chin demonstrates a unique ability to engage people from diverse backgrounds and to utilize unexpected materials and places.
Chin initiated the GALA Committee, an artist collective, for the conceptual work In the Name of the Place (1994–1996), in which original works of art appeared in the background of scenes of the television drama Melrose Place. With visual messages that touched on issues like gender, the environment, and global conflict, Chin and collaborators effectively infiltrated the airwaves with challenging and topical art. Chin was an early pioneer of the practice that now falls under the rubric of socially engaged art, and he has undertaken several community-based projects that address environmental health. For Revival Field (1990–1993), he collaborated with a USDA agronomist to create an experimental “green remediation” garden on the site of a landfill that confirmed a scientific technology. Incorporating aspects of formal garden design, Revival Field is planted with species known to extract heavy metals from toxic soil. Chin’s Fundred Project (2006–present) has involved nearly half-a-million children and adults across the country who create their own paper currency, “fundred dollar bills,” in a collective effort to bring visibility to the widespread threat of lead poisoning. The “Fundred Reserve” has been displayed in museums, schools, and the halls of Congress, where it brought the value of constituent voices directly to members of Congress and served as an educational opportunity for community members and policymakers.
Public spectacle and educational ambitions again combine in Chin’s two-part installation, Wake and Unmoored (2018), which occupied Times Square in 2018. Wake is a large-scale sculpture that assumes the form of a wrecked ship but also resembles the skeletal remains of a beached whale, while Unmoored exists as a mixed-reality experience that enables viewers to glimpse what Times Square would look like submerged under water as sea levels rise due to climate change. Through these and numerous other projects, Chin is redefining the parameters of contemporary art and challenging assumptions about the forms it can take, the issues it can address, and the settings it can inhabit.
BIOGRAPHY
Mel Chin received a B.A. (1975) from the Peabody College of Vanderbilt University. He has served as a visiting professor or fellow at a number of institutions, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology CoLab, George Washington University, the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan, and the University of Georgia. Chin’s work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at such venues as the Queens Museum, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Menil Collection in Houston, and the New Orleans Museum of Art, and he has created installations and public commissions in New York City, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and San Jose, California, and Charlotte, North Carolina, among other national and international sites.
Chin发起了GALA委员会，一个艺术家集体，为概念作品In the Name of the Place（1994-1996），其中原创艺术作品出现在电视剧Melrose Place的场景背景中。通过涉及性别、环境和全球冲突等问题的视觉信息，秦和合作者有效地将具有挑战性和话题性的艺术渗透到电波中。秦是早期实践的先驱，现在属于社会参与艺术的范畴，他已经开展了几个以社区为基础的项目，解决环境健康问题。在《复兴之路》（1990-1993）中，他与美国农业部的一位农学家合作，在一个垃圾填埋场的现场创造了一个实验性的 "绿色补救 "花园，证实了一种科学技术。融合了正式花园设计的各个方面，"复兴之田 "种植了一些已知能从有毒土壤中提取重金属的物种。Chin的Fundred项目（2006年至今）涉及全国各地近50万儿童和成人，他们创造了自己的纸币，即 "Fundred一元纸币"，以集体努力使人们认识到铅中毒的广泛威胁。Fundred Reserve "已经在博物馆、学校和国会大厅展出，它将选民的声音直接带给国会议员，并作为社区成员和决策者的教育机会。
