mel chin

  • Render

    Render


    2003
    (painting) oil on velvet, steel
    (West Bank wall) wax, pigment on fragments of Keffiyeh, wood
    (wall panels) wood, hardware
    18 x 18 x 9 feet

    “Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel; the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart; and it is always, therefore, the signal of a secret and violent inhumanity, the mask of cruelty.”
    -James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

    “…you ignored us while we were alive, well here we are, dead; our death didn’t interest you as long as it occurred on our own territory, well, now we throw it at your feet in the fire that consumes you; though we were invisible as we lived, visible suicides is what we will become.”
    -Bernard-Henri Lévy, Réflexions sur la Guerre: Le Mal et La Fin de l’Histoire

    A condition resides within the enshrouded room. A portrait, framed in armor, appears tearful, facing the exit encrusted with shattered particles that form a map of contested territories. Painted in the Venetian style, the image is “clown compromised” and “terrorized” by “masking,” leaving only sad eyes and a down-turned mouth on the kitsch of black velvet. On the walls, encaustic fragments of wood and shredded kuffiyehs suggest the remains of a suicide bomber.

    A space for inadequate descriptions: The evidence of a Palestinian woman suicide bomber and her victims, under a tearful, militaristic male gaze.

  • The Wayward Flight of an Auspicious Sign

    The Wayward Flight of an Auspicious Sign


    2003
    colored pencil on black paper
    15 3/4 x 22 3/4 inches

    “In the morning of the Chinese New Year in February 2003, I began a continuous, single-line drawing of a bat, an auspicious symbol in Chinese folklore. I was meditating on the United States discussions to invade Iraq and could foresee only a dark future. Thus the drawing took a blind uncertain path within itself, unable to escape the containment of its outline.”

    Image:
    Chin, Mel (b. 1951) © Copyright. The Wayward Flight of an Auspicious Sign. 2003.
    Colored pencil on black paper, 15 3/4 x 22 3/4″ (40 x 57.8 cm). The Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection Gift.
    The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, U.S.A.
    Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art
    Resource, NY

  • Trapped Flaw

    Trapped Flaw


    2003
    ink and colored pencil on vellum
    27 x 27 inches

    So-called scientific studies are often tilted to favor political ideology. This “fly on the wall” represents an imperfect, right-winged House fly, weeping over being caught. The eyes of the fly are after El Greco’s weeping St. Peter.

    Image:
    Chin, Mel (b.1951) © Copyright. Trapped Flaw. 2003. Ink, colored pencil, and pencil on transparentized paper in artist’s frame, Frame: 27 1/2 x 27 1/2 x 11/2″ (69.9 x 69.9 x 3.8 cm). The Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings
    Collection Gift.
    The Museum of Modem Art, New York, NY, U.S.A.
    Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art
    Resource, NY

  • Rough Rider

    Rough Rider


    2002
    barbed wire, steel
    38 x 29 x 23 inches

    A roping saddle made of barbed wire focuses on the Catholic colonization of Texas.


  • Cross for the Unforgiven


    2002
    AK-47 assault rifles (cut and welded)
    54 x 54 x 3 inches

    A Maltese cross of the Crusades, made from eight AK-47s, the international symbol of resistance to the West.

  • 9-11/9-11 original drawings

    2002
    ink, graphite, white-out on paper
    28 drawings each 11 x 8 1/2 inches
    note: framed according to artist specifications – framed dimension: 18 x 13 inches

    9-11/9-11 original graphic novella drawings were done in 2002, a year after the World Trade Center attacks. Chin created the drawings in a 96-hour session, printed a thousand copies (penned under the name Ignacio Morales), and distributed the publication in the streets of New York for free on 9/11/2002. These drawings, framed under thick glass and stainless steel that echo the architecture of the towers, served as the basis of the film 9-11/9-11.