mel chin

  • Our Strange Flower of Democracy

    Our Strange Flower of Democracy


    2005
    bamboo, river cane, burlap, coir, mahogany, steel, bottle caps
    15 x 18 feet, diameter

    Stuck on an island (like a cargo cult) we would worship the cargo of democracy. We send it over as a dumb bomb (BLU-82), fueling fear and apprehension.

  • Mende Mask

    Mende Mask

    front

    back

    2005
    black carbon on aged pine
    18 x 10 7/8 x 1 1/8 inches

    study for More to Tell

  • S.O.S.

    S.O.S.


    S.O.S. (Straight off the Street: Moment)
    2004
    video

    A documentary conducted in the streets of the Bronx, of heartbeats and words instead of talking heads. All statements were directed to the President of the United States in 2004. In association with art:21.


  • Guantanamo

    Guantanamo


    2003
    graphite, colored pencil on paper
    22 x 18 inches

    Persons unknown and under duress prompted this work. Rumors of suicide attempts at the Guantanamo prison for enemy combatants began this meditation. Based on William Dyce’s untitled study of Domenichino’s frescoes in the Monastery at Grotto Ferrata, Rome.

    Image:
    Chin, Mel (b. 1951) © Copyright. Guantanamo. 2003.
    Pencil and colored pencil on paper 16 x 11 3/4″ (40.6 x 29.8 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

  • Gertrude’s Girdle

    Gertrude’s Girdle


    2003
    electric stylus marks on Japanese paper
    25 x 25 inches

    The image, “burned” by the electrical arc of a sign maker’s pouncing tool, is inspired by a Gerald Weismann essay concerning Gertrude Stein. Her admitted disinterest in the A-bomb used on Japan, and her early history alongside her brother Leo collecting oceanic specimens at Woods Hole, MA, led to this combined morphology of the Atomic mushroom cloud over Hiroshima and the delicate internal structure of a ctenophore. A ctenophore is a sea creature also known as a combed jelly or Venus’s Girdle.