Maya Lin
Maya Lin is a prolific Chinese American interdisciplinary artist whose work often explores the relationships between race, gender, class, environment, and power. She is also one of the women of color artists that built the murals for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. Lin is one of the few Chinese American artists that commemorate the military personnel who died or were declared missing in the war. Lin works with all kinds of different materials often in public settings and collaboratively. Lin explores the politics of location in her art, and by studying her work I learned about the importance of climate change and nature.
My Wayfinder is outside of the Maya Lin room in NWS. The dead trees and the blue sky with clouds on the front reference Maya Lin’s famous work, “Ghost Forest,” in Madison Square Park, New York. I installed my Wayfinder on the ceiling so that viewers can look up to it just like they are in the forest in the park. I want viewers to also think about climate destruction. I chose to paint this mural because its purpose is to show how climate change negatively impacts the forests, and I want to honor how Lin increases awareness about climate destruction. I stained the back and the rest of my Wayfinder with wood color to represent one of the dead trees of the “Ghost Forest”. The words “Turbulence” and “Resistance” at the front and on the wall piece of my Wayfinder are from one of my favorite quotes from Maya Lin: “To fly, we need to have resistance. It’s all about turbulence. Reacting to images of wave patterns in fluid motion.” I placed the word “Turbulence” on the front of my Wayfinder to reference the agitation people experience when in the sky, and I wrote the word “Resistance” to show how trees are somehow able to live despite climate change. I didn’t color the screws because I wanted to show how the wood is suffering in resistance because of the screws.
My Wayfinder is outside of the Maya Lin room in NWS. The dead trees and the blue sky with clouds on the front reference Maya Lin’s famous work, “Ghost Forest,” in Madison Square Park, New York. I installed my Wayfinder on the ceiling so that viewers can look up to it just like they are in the forest in the park. I want viewers to also think about climate destruction. I chose to paint this mural because its purpose is to show how climate change negatively impacts the forests, and I want to honor how Lin increases awareness about climate destruction. I stained the back and the rest of my Wayfinder with wood color to represent one of the dead trees of the “Ghost Forest”. The words “Turbulence” and “Resistance” at the front and on the wall piece of my Wayfinder are from one of my favorite quotes from Maya Lin: “To fly, we need to have resistance. It’s all about turbulence. Reacting to images of wave patterns in fluid motion.” I placed the word “Turbulence” on the front of my Wayfinder to reference the agitation people experience when in the sky, and I wrote the word “Resistance” to show how trees are somehow able to live despite climate change. I didn’t color the screws because I wanted to show how the wood is suffering in resistance because of the screws.
