Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH, 1993
Art and architecture are balanced perfectly in Maya Lin’s practice. Her work consists of large-scale site specific installations and studio works, with landscape as the focus and inspiration.
Through her work, the artist presents new ways of looking at the world, and looks at how we relate and respond to the environment. Maya Lin ‘…peers curiously at the landscape through a twenty-first century lens, merging rational and technological order with notions of beauty and the transcendental. Utilizing technological methods to study and visualize the natural world, Lin takes micro and macro views of the earth, sonar resonance scans, aerial and satellite mapping devices and translates that information into sculptures, drawings and environmental installations.’ Maya Lin is currently working on her final memorial, What is Missing? which focuses on bringing awareness to the current crisis surrounding biodiversity and habitat loss.
Text from mayalin.com about What is Missing?
Imagine a memorial that would exist not as a fixed static monument, but as a work that would allow us to rethink the idea of a memorial. Imagine a work that could exist in several mediums and in multiple places simultaneously.
What is Missing? will focus attention on species and places that have gone extinct or will most likely disappear within our lifetime. The project exists as a multi-sited installations, as a website, whatismissing.net.
There have been five mass extinctions in the history of our planet. The last one was caused by an asteroid the size of Manhattan hitting the earth at the speed of 18,000 meters per second. We are now witnessing the sixth mass extinction in the planet’s history, the only one caused not by a catastrophic event, but by the actions of one single species: mankind.
Approximately every 20 minutes we witness the disappearance of a distinct living species of plant or animal. Within our lifetime we will witness the extinction of an incalculable number of species. By some estimates, as much as 30 percent of the world’s animals and plants could be on a path to extinction within 100 years.
What is Missing? will make us aware of the enormous loss of species that is presently occurring. Chronicling not just the extinction of specific species, it will focus equal attention on the threatened habitats and ecosystems that are vital to other species’ survival. It will also address the issues that people are not even aware are disappearing, from the sheer abundance of species and their scale to the loss of migratory corridors, the diminished sounds of songbirds that were common in our childhood, even the visibility of the stars at night.
The goal of What is Missing? is to not just make us aware of these losses but to give us direction and hope for what can be done to help.
andulkaphoto
2087
yousharknotpass
izzy806
origamiaround
jacobvanloon