HsinYing Lin V. 2

The recent performances of performance artist HsinYing Lin entail three works titled Cube Project, Human in the Box, and Train Head. These series of performances focus on themes such as isolation, despair, individual value, and a dichotomy between inner-discovery and outward-seeking. As a result, they build upon previous performances, such as Surrender Project which entails the link between physical and mental pain as well as conceptually conveying self-worth with contemporary civilization. 

In Cube Project, HsinYing Lin enters a makeshift box-structure with clear mylar panels. As she enters the cube, the audience can only see her figure from her shadow, as the mylar is only semi-transparent. HsinYing Lin then proceed to write the word ‘LIGHT’ over and over again for two-straight hours until her shadow becomes engulfed by the markings and she is no longer visible. The performance has now transformed into an installation and you would never know the artist is confined within this self-entrapment due to the blotting out of the panels with the immense amount of texts…blocking light. What Cube Project communicates would be the overarching search for self-value amidst the ‘light’ of HsinYing Lin’s environments. She is in essence, searching for meaning and purpose and we could regard the cube as a monolithic symbol of institutional tyranny. The ‘light’ is a symbolic artifact which seeks to penetrate this prison, only to end up becoming one with the confinement. 

With Human in the Box, the artist almost constructs a literal prison for herself. In this claustrophobic, small box, just large enough to fit a crouching human, HsinYing Lin enters the bare skeletal structure of the apparatus. She then proceeds to slowly entrap herself with mylar panels and covering the surface with black paint. In a sense, the performance seems like a self-erasure, as if the artist has ‘deleted’ herself from existence. As she breaks out from the box after completely encasing herself, she seems relieved and reborn, like a rising phoenix. This metamorphosis of confinement to freedom to reassuring self-worth reveals how pressure and discomfort can constrain and release tension, in both a psychological and metaphysical sense. 

Finally, Train Head is the shortest and the most confrontational performance as HsinYing Lin proceeds to react to her position as a passenger within public transportation by placing a bag over her head with a hand-print made from menstrual blood. What the piece could be communicating would be the lack of bodily autonomy over her surroundings. Unable to deal with the environment and social interactions, she conceptually conveys the feelings of entrapment brought on by uncomfortable physical circumstances, similar to Human in the Box. However, in this particular performance, Train Head reveals seeking escapism from imposed environments rather than a self-contained prison constructed to symbolize institutional criticism.

In summary, we can conclude these three performances by HsinYing Lin are highly interdisciplinary by incorporating elements of installation and the written-word, or text-based fragments. Also, these interdisciplinary performances delve into the psychological relationships we have with institutions, environments, other people, and ourselves. HsinYing Lin’s performances reveal a harrowing despair, an encroaching nihilism from overarching imposition by contemporary society in various forms, be they cultural, spiritual, metaphysical, sociological, or psychological. We will discover a dark web of self-contained makeshift prisons which symbolize the tyranny of contemporary social expectations and institutional boundaries. Provocative, intense, and suspenseful, HsinYing Lin’s performances communicate the imposition of symbolic harm by imposed expectations on self-worth and identity. In such a regard, these performances work exceptionally well with her previous work and build upon the themes conveying feelings of ‘how much more can we take’?

Written by Michael Hanna, Editor of Point Pleasant Publishing.

https://www.linhsinying.com