maya lin and systematic landscapes

You may be familiar with Maya Lin because she designed the winning entry for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial competition during her undergraduate studies. Right now, an exhibit at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., features Maya Lin’s landscape installations. The exhibit, entitled “Systematic Landscapes”, includes works which make connections with our own studies in architecture. Some similarities dealt with craft and technique; some of the installations were milled and lasercut (the burnt edges were not sanded off), some dealt with x- and y-contours as in our first IDM2 assignment, and some incorporated techniques such as lamination – but on a large scale. Other similarities were more about the big picture, like the way she chose to represent or model her ideas or the way she approached her work. An example of this is her representation of the Caspian Sea. She considered solid/void, positive/negative, as well as the viewer’s position and how many placements the viewer could assume relative to the pieces. She also related the concept of spacial perception to ordinary objects, such as atlases, by giving them topographical characteristics. While this exhibit is considered “art”, I can see through her models and process that she is an architect. There are qualities about the installations which are unmistakeable in this sense. What was so interesting was the matterof perspective she took in each installation. Maya took a unique approach to each of her installations which could in turn be interpreted in still more different perspectives. For example, one installation consisted of overlapping wires – they looked something like a tic-tac-toe board. The open ends were attached to the wall and the middle part, where the wires overlapped, was extended away from the wall. Because the ends intersected the wall, a shadow of each wire was created by lights which were cast on the installation. It was difficult to determine what was wire and what was shadow since the shadow connected to the wire on both ends, making a loop, so a second dimension was created. I was curious to see how I would perceive the piece if the angle or placement of the lights changed – I’m sure something new would come of it. Some of the installations were interactive. I was walking through one and I was amazed that with each step I took something completely new about the piece was revealed to me due to my change in position relative to that of the piece  as well as the speed at which my location was changing. This exhibit is a testimony of study and process. Above all, I was intrigued by the way she manipulated matter.

-Kendra