PREGNANCY AND AFTER MOTHERHOOD INSPIRED SEVERAL OF THE LYNN LU PERFORMANCES AND INSTALLATIONS
Projects:
Paradoxes for the Virtual
collaborative Skype performance with Birgitta Hosea
Lab451LONDON; Camden Image Gallery; London, UK. 2015
In a game of Exquisite Corpse, Lynn Lu (live) and Birgitta Hosea (projected from SKYPE) explore intimacy and the generation of interpersonal closeness across a virtual divide through a scored series of shared confidences.
Spill
kinetic sculpture / installation
Secret Archipelago; Palais de Tokyo; Paris, France. 2015
A clawfooted tub continually overflows with milk.The surface of the liquid quivers to the cadence of a newborn’s wails.
Baraka
Art Nomade: International Meeting of Performance Art
produced by Bang, Centre d’art Actuel; Langage Plus; Alma, Canada. 2013
I deliver an academic paper by L. Moran and J. Gilad (2007), entitled ’From Folklore to Scientifc Evidence: Breastfeeding and Wet-Nursing in Islam and the Case of Non-Puerperal Lactation’.Audiences nearest to me discern a second, veiled, activity from the rhythmic drone of a pump and my oddly-shaped chest.When I finish delivering the paper, I decant breastmilk expressed during the recitation into porcelain spoons. I then spoon-feed the audience, one person at a time.
On mother´s milk and kissed fed
Art Nomade: International Meeting of Performance Art produced by Bang, Centre d’art Actuel; La Pulperie; Chicoutimi, Canada. 2013
A suspended block of ice melts, gradually releasing little red seeds frozen in it. I recite excerpts – gleaned from literature through the ages – on nursing, from the most idealized of aphorisms through to the starkest complexities of the lived experience.All the while, milk spills from my breasts, turning crimson at my feet.
“…A baby nursing at a mother’s breast is an undeniable affirmation of our rootedness in nature. (D. Suzuki)
Adagio
performance / installation: 40 minutes
In Confidence: Reorientations in Recent Art; Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA); Perth, Australia. 2013
Triptych: A baby plays with her toes.A woman is hooked up to breast pumps; a steady trickle of milk pools at her feet. A suspended block of ice – with blossoming Corymbia frozen in it – slowly melts.
Mizuko Jizo
performance / installation diptych: 1 hour
IN>TIME 13; Defibrillator; Chicago IL, USA. 2013
Standing in a shopfront window, milk flows continually from the top of my head – like a fountain – over my fecund form. A clawfoot bathtub filled with earth and tiny seedlings rests in the window across from me.
… more about Lynn Lu
Lynn Lu received a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University with a major in Sculpture and a minor in Graphic Design in 1999. In 1998, she studied with Christian Boltanski at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and at the École Marchutz in Aix-en-Provence. She earned her MFA in New Genres at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2002, and completed a PhD program (ABD) at Musashino Art University in Tokyo in 2008, on a full scholarship from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 2010 she was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by the University of Newcastle in Australia.
Since 1997, Lynn has exhibited and performed extensively in the United States, Singapore, Japan, China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia, Australia, New Zealand, UK, France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Poland, Belarus, Czech Republic, Turkey, Greece, Argentina, and Canada.