Mel Chin

PROVENANCE:  Courtesy of the artist

“While looking over a drawing by Leonardo Da Vinci,  this drawing is based on my sentiment it  it is best to prepare for the worst.”

Mel Chin is known for the broad range of approaches in his art, including works that require multi-disciplinary, collaborative teamwork and works that enlist science as a component to developing complex ideas. Miranda Lash, curator of Chin’s 2014 traveling retrospective exhibition, Rematch, described his work as having a mutative strategy, depending on concepts to derive the materials of its realization, from actions, to films, to objects, as necessary.

He created Revival Field (1991), pioneering the field of “green remediation,” the use of plants to remove toxic, heavy metals from the soil. From 1995-1998 he formed the collective the GALA Committee that produced In the Name of the Place a public art project conducted on American prime-time television. His Fundred Project (2008-2020) invests in actions to end childhood lead-poisoning through mass public engagement via the creation of art currency as a means for policy-maker education He continues to produce orginal films such as 9-11/9-11 (2007), to decenter preoccupations that engender nationalism and L’Arctique est Paris (2015), to deliver the poignant warnings of a Greenlandic subsistence hunter to an international audience for COP21. In the summer of 2018 he filled New York’s Times Square with a massive sculpture, Wake, on the ground, and an AR (Augmented Reality) project, Unmoored, in the air, creating an experiential portal into a past maritime industry and a future of rising waters. All Over the Place, a 40-year survey exhibition at the Queens Museum, was named by Hyperallergic as the best NYC exhibition of 2018. He is the recipient of many awards, grants, and honorary degrees including a MacArthur Fellowship in 2019.