In this episode, we delve into the extraordinary career of Maya Lin, a trailblazing artist and architect who, at just twenty-one, crafted the iconic Vietnam Veterans Memorial against fervent opposition. Join us as we explore her unique artistic tripod of art, architecture, and memorials, all grounded in a deep reverence for the natural world and a keen awareness of history.

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Bio:

Maya Lin is known for her large-scale environmental artworks, her architectural works and her memorial designs. Her unique multi-disciplinary career has “resisted categories, boundaries and borders” (Michael Brenson). In her book Boundaries, she writes I see myself existing between boundaries, a place where opposites meet; science and art, art and architecture, East and West. My work originates from a simple desire to make people aware of their surroundings.”

Nature and the environment have long been central concerns for Lin who attended Yale University where she earned a BA in 1981 and a Master of Architecture degree in 1986. Lin was thrust into the spotlight when, as a senior at Yale, she submitted the winning design in a national competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to be built in Washington, D.C. She has gone on to a remarkable career in both art and architecture, whilst still being committed to memory works that focus on some of the critical historical issues of our time.

Lin’s art explores how we experience and relate to landscape, setting up a systematic ordering of the land that is tied to history, memory, time, and language. Her interest in landscape has led to works influenced by topographies and geographic phenomena - item can be named or described; item can be georeferenced; an item can be assigned a time (interval) at which it is/was present.

Her artwork has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions at museums and galleries worldwide, with works in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art; The Smithsonian Institution; The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; and the California Academy of Sciences, among others. She is represented by the Pace Gallery in New York.   

Her architectural projects, largely undertaken at the request of non-profit institutions include the newly renovated Neilson Library (2021) at Smith College, the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, Cambridge Campus (2015) in Massachusetts, the Museum for Chinese in America (2009) in New York City and the Riggio-Lynch Interfaith Chapel (2004) and Langston Hughes Library (1999) in Clinton, Tennessee. Her designs create a close dialogue between the landscape and built environment, oftentimes juxtapose old and new construction, strive to be harmonious within their site- whether it be an urban or rural setting and she is committed to advocating sustainable design solutions in all her works.

Ghost Forest

Maya Lin’s Ghost Forest, brings a towering stand of forty-nine Atlantic white cedar trees, victims of salt water inundation due to climate change to downtown manhattan’s Madison Square Park. A 6 month installation- this majestic grove of cut trees will slowly turn grayer and more ghostly as the park’s grand living trees go through all seasons- starting in winter and returning to winter by the end of the installation- Lin brings her vision as an artist and her agency as an environmental activist to this project. Ghost Forest is a haunting symbol of the devastation of climate change.

Climate change is threatening forests around the world and creating mass die-offs of once vibrant woodlands. They are referred to as ghost forests and this phenomena is becoming much more frequent as the climate changes more rapidly. The trees in Ghost Forest were suffering from of salt water infiltration and were being cleared as part of regeneration efforts in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, an extremely vulnerable site of the Atlantic coastal pine barrens ecosystem which encompasses more than one million acres.

Manhattan. And an accompanying ghost forest timeline.

What Is Missing? (2009–ongoing).

In recent years, Lin has been developing what she terms her ‘fifth and last memorial’, a multifaceted project that addresses the ongoing rapid loss of biodiversity, titled What Is Missing? (2009–ongoing). At its core is a website that maps the ecological history of the planet – discussing the living things and ecosystems that once thrived (cod as big as an adult human, just a century ago!) and what has been done to restore the environment. 

It also allows anyone to submit a memory about the environment. 

Contemporary connections

Joseph Beuys - 7000 Oaks: City Forestation Instead of City Administration

The subtitle of this work indicates that 7,000 Oaks was fundamentally a time-based, or "process" work of environmentalism and eco-urbanization. Beuys planted 7000 trees in the small, historic city of Kassel, Germany, over several years (carried out with the assistance of volunteers), each oak accompanied by a stone of basalt. Beuys's concerted effort to physically, spiritually and metaphorically alter the city's social spaces - economic, political, and cultural, among others - is what finally constituted a community-wide "social sculpture"

Conclusion

Lin can be connected with pragmatic conservatism’, a Burkean-derived worldview that finds value in tradition but that embraces incremental reform, led by elites. President Barack Obama, who awarded Lin the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016, could be seen as an exemplar of that position. Lin wants history to be remembered with dignity and she will insert her work into the world only to the degree that it will have some kind of concrete benefit, whether practical or poetic.

References: 

https://artreview.com/maya-lins-utopian-pragmatism/

https://abcnews.go.com/US/ghost-forest-formation-accelerates-amid-sea-level-rise/story?id=100769274

⁠https://artreview.com/maya-lins-utopian-pragmatism/⁠

⁠https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/private-world-public-artist-maya-lin-180981336/⁠

https://www.archpaper.com/2019/11/maya-lin-ghost-forest/

https://www.mayalinstudio.com/art/ghost-forest

https://www.artforum.com/interviews/maya-lin-on-planting-a-ghost-forest-in-manhattan-86134

https://www.whatismissing.org/solutions/overview

https://www.whatismissing.org/what-if

Have a look at the artist's works:

https://www.whatismissing.org/content/seagrass-habitat-loss