Lin May Saeed: Arrival of the Animals at The Clark
There is something very special about Lin May Saeed’s exhibit: Arrival of the Animals. I saw it a couple of weeks ago when The Clark re-opened to visitors and I’ve been thinking about t ever since.
Cleaner, 2006 (second version 2020), polystyrene foam, steel, acrylic paint, polyethylene fabric, plastic watering can
Cleaner depicts the rescue of an oil-slicked animal by a hazmat-suit-clad human. The first its body limp, is injured or expired; the second, huddled on the floor, back to the wall, appears exhausted and in mourning. A watering can forms the mask of a creature rendered alien in the environment of its own making.
I go to write about it, but then I find myself looking through the pictures I took and thinking some more.
There was a kind of eery feeling in the gallery. There is something biblical about Lin May’s work, no the animals aren’t marching in two-by-two or anything like that, but there is an atmosphere that this work is important, than Lin May is telling us something that we already know and just haven’t connected the dots to yet.
St. Jerome and the Lion, 2016, steel, lacquer
Lin May revisits a classic story of human kindness, in which the Christian priest and scholar Jerome knelt to remove a thorn from an ailing lion’s paw. In her version, the lion takes centre stage, his sly expression suggesting he hasn’t decided if or how they’ll repay the saint.
Lin May’s ‘gates’ are drawings in steel: the artist bends and welds steel rods into cartoonish contours inside a rectangular frame, to which she attaches hinges and a handle. The gate, for her, suggests both enclosure and an opening toward utopian possibility.
Just as an aside, I love how Lin May’s ‘gates’ photograph. No, the picture isn’t out of focus, if you zoom in on St. Jerome and Lion, you can see that the shadows from the steel mean that we see everything tripled. I don’t know if that’s supposed to be part of the experience, or if it’s just the lighting in the museum, but I’m a big fan.
Hawr al-Hammar/Hammar Marshes, 2020, cardboard, paper, wood, fluorescent lights
The Hammar Marshes in Iraq are widely thought to have been a model for the Garden of Eden, in part for their spectacular biodiversity. Over centuries, human residents have built distinctive floating structures they inhabit alongside domesticated water buffalo. In the 1990s the marshes were drained by Saddam Hussein, allegedly to expose Shia rebels. A civil engineering project helped restore them, but they are now drying up again due to growing cities bordering Iraq and drought brought by a warming planet. Still for Lin May, the idea of a modern-day Eden in a war-torn country represents a small pocket of utopia in the present. She depicts the marshes here in what she calls a ‘silhouette’, a format Lin May sees as reminiscent of the woodcuts and cut-paper film animation of early-twentieth-century Germany.
War, 2006, acrylic paint on polystyrene foam
Although not included in the exhibit, these words from Lin May’s website perfectly set the tone for her work…
Hello to you all, how do you live?
Rabbit:
We live in small groups, have no fixed partnerships.
Build widely branching tunnel systems,
In which our young are born, naked and blind.
We still reproduce when imprisoned.
Hare:
I live solitary. Sleep in a shallow hollow.
My offspring are born with fur and open eyes.
I have never been domesticated.
Humans:
We don’t quite know.
Until we have found out, we wage wars.
Panther Relief, 2017, polystyrene foam, acrylic paint, wood
In this posthuman world, a big cat wades through the polluted stream, its blue and greens tinted by Lin May’s muddy brush water. This may be the remains of a Persian Gulf megacity, with ruined glass skyscrapers, barbed wire, and minarets. Fan-shaped foliage in the foreground evokes the lotus forms of ancient Egyptian ornament. Animals will return, Lin May suggests, to the vacuum left by humans.
Lin May’s message isn’t subtle t all; the human species is destroying the planet, we are hurting the animals that we share our planet with But her work is something else, it is a whisper.
It is giant animals made of styrofoam, cardboard and steel, it is sketches of battle scenes and neon houses floating away, lost to us.
Seven Sleepers, 2020, polystyrene foam, acrylic paint, steel, fabric, paper, plants, glass, water, cotton cord, wood, cardboard.
This sculpture group, Lin May’s largest to date, revisits a legend that exists in both medieval Christian tradition and in the Islamic Qur’an; “The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus.” In both accounts, a group of young Christians in the third century CE, persecuted by the Roman emperor, retreats to a cave for protection. They pray and pray before falling asleep for what becomes three hundred years. Upon waking, they emerge from the cave into a world in which their faith has become the state religion. Depending on who tells the story, the men are either guarded by a dog at the cave’s mouth or joined by one in its interior. Lin May is struck by the story as both transreligious and interspecies. Sleep for her, is a fascinating theme: it refuses the logic of productivity, opens onto the strangeness of dreams, and, eventually, yields to reawakening.
I was tempted to include a picture of every piece in the exhibition, each and every one was unique and told its story beautifully, instead I have included some of my favourites, the work that made me really stop and think and made me feel more than a little sad.
Bee Relief, 2018, polystyrene foam, acrylic paint, steel, wood, paper
A German-Iraqi artist, born in 1973, ‘Arrival of the Animals’ is Lin May’s first solo museum show in North America and will be on display at The Clark until 25th October 2020.
The Clark Art Institute, 225 South Street, Williamstown, MA, 01267. See their website for more information and to book a time to visit.