Jingjing Lin is a multimedia conceptual artist who frequently employs experimental narrative techniques to present a possible future infused with absurd imaginings and humor, juxtaposing contradictory facets to refract and challenge unresolved historical issues. In this realm, she contemplates and delves into the essence of personal politics, absence, gender, death, philosophy, dynamics of power, and trauma. Her works serve not only as invitations to meditative introspection but also as interventions into how we exist and love in our present lives, how we find meaning related to our own experiences.
Through her multidisciplinary practice, she utilizes objects, language, imagery, and drama to inquire into our roles and responsibilities as interdependent beings within our shared environment and the impact of media on contemporary culture. She delves deep into the complexities of technological neocolonialism, exploring the possibilities of constructing the future from challenging realities within a "non-place" global context. Her artwork spans installation, video, sound, animation, light, performance, sculpture, painting, drawing, coding, mixed media, and photography.
林菁菁是一位多媒体观念艺术家，运用实验性叙事呈现可能的未来，她常常在作品中注入荒谬的想象和幽默，将矛盾并置，以折射和挑战未解决的历史问题。在这个领域，她思考并深入探讨了个人政治、缺席、性别、死亡、哲学、权力动态和创伤的本质。她的作品不仅是对冥想的邀请，也是对我们如何在生活中存在和爱的干预，以及我们如何找到与我们自己的经验相关的意义。通过她的跨学科实践，她利用物体、语言、图像和戏剧，来探讨我们作为相互依存的存在，在我们共享环境中的角色和责任，以及媒体对当代文化的影响。她深入探讨了技术新殖民主义的复杂性，探索了从具有挑战性的现实中建构未来的可能性，在一个“非地点”全球背景下。她的艺术作品涵盖了装置、视频、声音、动画、光、表演、雕塑、绘画、绘画、编码、混合媒体和摄影。
We are Free to Choose but We Are not Free From the Consequences of Our Choices: Departures 200 x 250cm LED display panel
We are Free to Choose but We Are not Free From the Consequences of Our Choices: Arrivals 200 x 250cm LED display panel
LED display panels as make part of the Take Off project, simulating Arrival and Departure boards. The brightly colored flight information on the screens scrolls according to the current time at the site of the installation.
LED显示屏作为“Take Off”项目的一部分，模拟到达和出发信息牌。屏幕上鲜艳的航班信息会根据安装地点的当前时间滚动显示。
Username or Password Incorrect Installation 2017
Part of Take Off is an installation of 50 marble passports, representing 50 countries. The text and images from the covers of those countries’ real passports is faithfully engraved onto the marble. The pieces are the size of the originals, but much thicker.
Passports are intended to prove the legitimacy, recognition, and traceability of one's identity; they signify friendliness and establish that the holder is not a threat, allowing them to enter other countries.
“Take Off”项目的一部分是一个由50个大理石护照组成的装置，代表着50个国家。这些国家真实护照封面的文本和图像被忠实地雕刻在大理石上。这些大理石片的尺寸与护照原件相同，但厚度厚了许多。
护照旨在证明个人身份的合法性、承认性和可追溯性；它们象征着友好，并表明持有人不构成威胁，从而允许他们进入其他国家。
The Quick and Easy Way Installation 2017
The ongoing presence of violence, continuously employed as a quick and simple means of problem-solving, is disconcerting and disheartening. It represents a profound regression in our collective human nature and civilization. As Mahatma Gandhi wisely stated, "An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind." This work invites reflection and transcending any primal instincts that drive us to resort to violence, calling for the collective wisdom of peace and understanding.
暴力的持续存在, 持续被作为一种快速简单的解决问题的手段是令人不安和沮丧的，它是我们集体人性和文明的深刻倒退。正如甘地的明智之语：以眼对眼的最终只会让整个世界失明。该作品邀请反思并超越任何驱使我们动用暴力的原始本能，呼吁和平和理解的集体智慧。
One Hundred Percent Installation 2015
One Hundred Percent is an installation artwork that extensively utilizes clothing tags produced en masse in factories as a unique material. By magnifying it, the artwork boldly proclaims that fantasy is a promise and advertising associated with mass production, offering feedback that in the realm of material consumption, it's not just about the products themselves but also about imagination and emotion.The inspiration behind this installation artwork stems from witnessing the frantic pursuit of fast consumption and large-scale production in modern society, as well as people's excessive reliance on materialism. By enlarging what is typically an overlooked small item - clothing tags - into a colossal installation, the artwork seeks to convey a powerful message: we live in a world dominated by labels, packaging, and mass manufacturing, where these tags were once promises of dreams and fantasies.The name of this installation artwork, "one hundred percent," signifies a commitment of the highest purity, but it also carries a hint of irony, questioning whether this commitment is truly worthy of our trust. The artwork prompts viewers to reflect on their roles in the material world, the satisfaction they derive, and their relationship with reality.
百分之百
大量使用了工厂批量生产的服装标签作为别致的材料，放大地宣告了幻想作为批量生产的承诺和宣传，来反馈物质世界消费的不仅仅是商品本身，同时还有想象力和情感。这个装置作品的灵感来源于目睹现代社会对于快速消费和大规模生产的疯狂追逐，以及人们对于物质主义的过度依赖。通过将衣物标签这一通常被忽视的小物件放大成巨大的装置，作品试图传达出一种强烈的讯息：我们生活在一个被标签、被包装、被大规模制造的世界中，这些标签一度是对梦想和幻想的承诺。
这个装置作品的题目：百分之百意味着一种百分之百的最高纯度的承诺，隐含着一种讽刺，询问该承诺是否真的值得我们的信任？作品让观众反思自己在物质世界中的角色，满足感和以及我们和现实的关系。
This is Beginning of My Desperation Installation 2017
This installation consists of twelve vibrant, transparent, hollow acrylic glass boxes arranged in a row, forming a rainbow-like spectrum of colors. The text on the boxes, including book titles, authors, publishing houses, and a line of simple yet resolute promotional phrases, is sourced from twelve top-selling self-help books. These books instruct individuals on how to swiftly attain happiness and joy. The sales figures of these books are remarkable, but even more remarkable is the depth of helplessness hidden behind the intense yearning.
这件装置作品由十二个色彩鲜艳、透明、空心的丙烯酸玻璃箱组成，它们排成一排形成了彩虹般的色彩。箱子上的文字，包括书名、作者、出版社，以及一行简单坚定的宣传句，来自12 本真实出版的排名前列的畅销书，教导人们如何迅速地获得快乐和幸福，这些书籍的销量是惊人的，更惊人的是在强烈的渴望背后，有多少深切无助的人们。
Whatever Survives Installation 2017
Fall in Love A Million Times 300 x 200 cm pigment print on canvas 2019
Project "Lov-Lov" turns from the dystopian to the Utopian. In the Lov-Lov world every kind of perfection is possible – and commercially available.
One part of the installation is a pharmacy showcasing mind-altering medications that offer perfect satisfaction, allowing customers to purchase and quickly experience feelings they deeply long for but have trouble attaining: love, respect, care, friendship, trust, gratitude, intimacy, and sense of connectedness. Lov-Lov does wide-scale social engineering through individualized shortcuts.
跨学科项目“Lov-Lov”从反乌托邦变成了乌托邦。在Lov-Lov的世界里，每一种完美都是可能的，并且都可以商业化。 药店是“Lov-lov”项目的一部分，展示着可以提供完美满足的药物，让顾客能够购买并迅速体验到他们内心深处渴望但难以实现的感受：爱、尊重、关心、友谊、信任、感激、亲密和归属感。
Lov-Lov通过个性化的捷径进行大规模社会工程。
No One Puts Their Children in A Boat Unless the Water is Safer than the Land 300c200cm, 2019
Everything is Unreal Until It's Not new solo show @ DE SARTHE Gallery Hong Kong March 23rd -April 27th ,2024
Press Release
DE SARTHE is pleased to present Everything is Unreal Until It’s Not, a solo exhibition by New York-based artist Lov-Lov debuting a piercing, semi-organic installation as well as a new body of videos and works on canvas. Within the exhibition, the artist initiates a dialogue via a stark contrast of the idyllic and the unsettling. A study of comforts and catastrophes in the technological era, the presented artworks not only speculate the authenticity of a virtual mirage but allude to the intricate illusions of reality, where everything is unreal until it is not. Lov-Lov’s exhibition opens on March 23rd and runs through April 27th 2024.
Lov-Lov is a fictitious artist identity developed by Lin Jingjing, as an amorphous vessel of art creation. Inspired by the versatility and fluidity of artificial intelligence, Lov-Lov is a self-defined entity free of physical indicators and binary definitions such as age, gender, or ethnicity. An isolation of the transhumanist capabilities enabled by contemporary technology, Lov-Lov aims to be a noumenal mimesis of consciousness that peeks behind the veil of empirical reality.
In the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), German philosopher Immanuel Kant proposed the doctrine of “transcendental idealism,” which suggests that all perceptions of objects and reality are not of the subjects themselves, but only the way they appear to us under the influence of our sensibilities. In other words, reality is but a phenomenon authenticated by subjective feeling. However, this notion has grown far more complex in the contemporary era. With the permeated aid of technology, every aspect of living is rendered a bit sweeter, brighter, and more palatable. Everyone and everything are more beautiful when experienced through the layered bias meticulously manipulated to please, comfort, and impress – and Lov-Lov asks, is this the new reality? Is this what we as a collective have subscribed to believe?
In the exhibition, Lov-Lov’s works on canvas and video artworks posit a world that embodies the abovementioned philosophy. Within the videos, different humanoids with flawless features and perfectly symmetrical faces appear one after the other in a continuous montage. Less than 60 seconds a pop, adhering to today’s rule of thumb for consuming media, each clip comprises an ambiguous sermon, preaching a vaguely familiar truth. The faces, toying with the effect of ‘The Uncanny Valley,’ are hauntingly seductive yet inexplicably alarming.
The imagery of each video was crafted using modern software and AI, while the scripts were composed using a blend of varied existing materials, mimicking AI generative methods. Targeting the pathos, the words are guided by rhetoric, as if written as a love song. Equivocal yet evocative, the videos are reminiscent of artificial sweetener, and Lov-Lov raises another question: Does it matter if it’s sugar as long as the taste is sweet? In a world of unrealities, is rational discourse still relevant if the empirical narrative is convincing?
An extension of the video works, Lov-Lov’s paintings portray a generic artificial environment that is both fantastical and tranquilizing. Between the strangely scaled architecture and polyhedral trees, solitary figures wander mindlessly as if a gamer’s digital avatar. Offering an alternative landscape to real life, the artworks speak to the evolving trend of technological escapism, where virtual worlds have become not only a temporary getaway, but an immersive oasis that has been embraced as a part of real life. From personal devices to entire cityscapes, there is seemingly a simulated reality masked over the life in which we live, a candy-coating that thickens with every digitally enhanced image and curated feed. Yet, when the blue pill promises hope and indulgence, when sweet lies coddle our need for control, and when illusion distracts our fear of the unknown, we will willing accept because why not? Afterall, everything is only unreal until our minds accept that it is not.
However, until the day that humanity forfeits the physical body for psychological pleasure, there will be certain events of monumental scale that will crack the mirage. Lov-Lov’s final artwork in the exhibition is an installation that responds to the consequence of living in a prolonged fantasy. In drastic contrast with the video and canvas artworks, the installation artwork “Everything is Unreal Until It’s Not” (2024), titled same as the exhibition, is composed of an array of knifes and blades suspendedatop a reflective surface centered in the space. Thorny vines appear to vegetate from the handles, reaching toward the ceiling like a spreading nightmare. As if a scene inspired by classic fairytales, the installation conveys a certain banality in its representation of harm and hostility that speaks to our disbelief in utter disasters. In an existence where idealism is perpetually reaffirmed, traumatic events such as war and widespread disease almost register as fiction in our subconscious minds. As catastrophe occurs, we observe from a distance through filtered information that keep the illusion intact. It is only when adversity lands between our faces and our screens, forcing immediate confrontation, that we finally see and say, “Wow, this is unreal.”
Interdisciplinary Project
