From Maya Lin, on Ecofeminist Art
By Li Xinmo
When we imagine a monument, a tall, erect structure appears before our eyes. It is hard, cold, solemn, and filled with the tragic heroism of heroism. It is so abrupt and huge that people who face it need to look up to see it. It makes people feel small and humble, and it has a threatening power that shocks people’s hearts and souls. When we see the Washington Monument, the World War II Memorial in the United States, the Red Army Monument in the former Soviet Union, and the Monument to the People’s Heroes in China, and then look around at the monuments around the world, they have amazing similarities in shape. As a form of architecture, the monument contains cultural connotations. As a representation of the symbolic system, it obviously comes from the prototype of phallic culture. The tall and majestic monument just fits the inherent characteristics of patriarchal culture – that is, conveying possession, control, aloofness, and irresistible authority. It is something to be worshipped, not to be approached.
The monument model constructs people’s living space and visual structure. Especially in highly urbanized areas, skyscrapers are the most typical monumental masculine buildings, occupying urban space. It marks the knowledge discourse of modernity, such as technology, development, progress and civilization. However, what supports human modern civilization is the plundering of nature: the extraction of oil, coal and minerals; the felling of trees; the pollution of soil, water and atmosphere; and the gradual extinction of species. Driven by materialism, people expand the territory of private desire. Nature, as the opposite of man, becomes the conquered, the used, and the conquered. Rivers and mountains have long lost their divinity in the period of nature worship, and have been reduced to materialized others who are watched and used.
But the Vietnam Veterans Memorial designed by Maya Lin provides us with another perspective. It does not soar into the sky, but lies on the ground. It’s like two cracks in the earth that meet. Two walls that fade in two different directions and gradually disappear. It is also like a book that is about to be opened, a corner of the book is gently opened, and everything written in the book has not yet been revealed. This monument is sunk into the ground instead of protruding outside. It is inlaid in the green lawn, close to the soil, peaceful and quiet. The names of 57,000 fallen soldiers are engraved on the dark granite wall. This memorial is like a silent history book, and this history is strung together by the names of the dead one by one. People who come to commemorate can find the names of the commemorated, and each name marks the existence and demise of a person. They can be seen and perceived through these names.
Just as Maya Lin said: “The main body of this design must be people, not politics. Only when you accept this pain and the reality of death can you get out of their shadow and transcend them. I do hope people will cry for it, and from then on dominate themselves and return to the light.”
The information I read from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is about the reconciliation between man and nature. As a trace of man, it does not override others, but is deeply rooted in nature. Those dead are not general political symbols, but living people one by one. They once walked on this land, lived in this world, and had relationships with the people around them. And now they sleep underground in the form of death. They once came to this world, but died for their country in a war launched by the country. As a political discourse they are national heroes, but as individuals they are just someone’s lover and someone’s child.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was built not from the will of the country, but from a more humane perspective. It allows the names of those dead to be placed here, and establishes contact with people who are familiar with them through their names, and they conduct close communication and dialogue. This monument is not to mark the history and great achievements of a country, but to open up the deaths of many individuals here, so that those who are alive can perceive the meaning of life beyond death. So this monument, this black shiny wall, is a place where the living and the dead meet and have a dialogue.
The form of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is extremely simple, from a distance it is just a broken line with an angle, but it has a lasting and constant power. It is precisely because of its fit with the land that it presents an unusually deep and silent character. Maya Lin’s works are permeated with the subconsciousness of naturalism. She places human life and death in nature, instead of placing human beings above nature. This is what I can often understand in her works. Her concern for nature has always run through her creations.
Storm King Wavefield is one of her important public artworks. She uses and explores the imagery of water ripples. This is a land art covering an area of 1.62m2 (4 acres). Eleven rows of wavy lines made of earth and grass. This work does not use sculpture materials such as steel in the general sense, nor does it deliberately add artificial materials. She just used the soil itself, quietly changing the shape of the soil, making it appear in the shape of flowing water, and the lawn covered these ripples. When people walk in, they can only perceive one continuous bump and depression, and they can sit and rest on these waves. Only by pulling away a certain distance and coming to a high place can you see its full picture.
Maya Lin’s works permeate her feelings and fascination for nature. She let her works quietly cling to the land, and calmly show her inner strength.
The shape of water ripples and sand dunes has become a recurring image in Maya Lin’s works. In her creations, nature becomes the subject that can be perceived, touched, and listened to. She abstracts the water pattern into a solidified line and suspends it in space. Through the changes of space, form and texture, the water in nature is transformed into visual water. The hard and dry water pattern image, which does not carry any traces of life, occupies the indoor space, which will make people fall into deep thinking about ecology and nature.
What I read from Maya Lin’s works are the ubiquitous characteristics of ecofeminism. The respect and love for nature and life revealed in her works is a unique voice in the world trend of powerful power expansion.
An important proposition of ecofeminism is that the binary knowledge system developed by patriarchal culture separates man and nature, man and woman, reason and sensibility, spirit and body. And that man, man, reason, and spirit are superior to nature, woman, sensibility, and body. Women as natural persons are always in a state of exclusion. Therefore, human plunder and harm to nature is the direct result of patriarchal culture. Thus feminism and ecologism are homologous and parallel.
The ecological issue is no longer a regional issue, but a common global topic. Ecofeminist art is happening and will continue to happen.
