Maya Lin
If we had a God’s-eye view of our world, would it affect our actions? Would we make different choices if we could see the interconnectedness of our waterways and oceans? Would we reconsider our wasteful habits? Maya Lin’s elemental and elegant recycled silver works prod us to pose these questions.
Maya Lin (American, b. 1959)
Silver Thames, 2012
Recycled silver
19 x 78 x 1/2 in.
The Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art, Gift of Barbara ’68 and Theodore ’68 Alfond, 2013.34.88. © Maya Lin Studio. © Maya Lin Studio. Image courtesy of Pace Gallery
Lin has brought her thought and memorializing sensibility to the subject of the world’s waterways. In wall-mounted reliefs that harken back to the clarity of form of vintage silhouette portraits, Lin traces the path and volume of some of the world’s essential rivers and casts them in recycled silver. The material, chosen for its preciousness and reflective quality, enables the final works that live directly and discretely on the wall to radiate, and imbues them with an almost mystical quality. The shapes of each of these recycled silver works—as distinct and familiar as their waterway subjects—are our lifelines. They are the true sources of our wellbeing, community, and industry, and are visually kindred to the unique creases of our hands.
Silver Thames
In Silver Thames (2012) we see the meandering path of the river as it stretches from Gloucestershire through London to the Thames Estuary by Southend-on-Sea. Generations ago, the nuances of the whole would have been known by its inhabitants, but such awareness has been replaced by a micro-view. Lin is encouraging us to reawaken our vision and recognize these bodies of water as the great providers that they are. It is difficult to care for something we cannot see, so Lin gives us vision. She reminds us of the rivers’ beauty and fragility, and of our responsibility to revitalize these places that have been weakened, if not altogether destroyed, as consequences of human and industrial negligence.
Lin’s artistic practice is highly aesthetic but also profoundly conscientious, and she purposefully accepts her role as an agent of change. In these works and other related series of pin rivers, cut marble topologies of vanishing bodies of water, and her multi-part memorial What Is Missing, Lin realizes her power as an artist to bring attention to what is at stake. Her sculptures are at once elegies for what was, but also celebrations of what could be again. She is using her art to call for change and to inspire action, restoration, and hope.
Art for Rollins: The Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art, Rollins Museum of Art Book Series
This excerpt by Abigail Ross Goodman is from Art for Rollins: The Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art book series. Each volume features full color images and texts of works in the Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art, at the Rollins Museum of Art. Included in Volume II are acquisitions of works by 47 artists including María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Rosemarie Castoro, Melvin Edwards, Charline von Heyl, David Hockney, William Kentridge, Trevor Paglen, Thomas Scheibitz, Hank Willis Thomas, Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems, and Jack Whitten, among others.
Get your copy in the Museum Shop at The Rollins Museum of Art in Winter Park, Florida.
Virtually View Silver Thames by Maya Lin in a 360 degree view of Mediated Terrain: Perspectives of a Re-envisioned Landscape from Rollins Museum of Art’s Summer 2023 season.
