Candice Lin (Concord, 1979) is an interdisciplinary artist, her recent solo exhibitions include the exhibition cycle A Hard White Body at Bétonsalon, Paris; Portikus, Frankfurt; and the Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago; as well as solo exhibitions at Francois Ghebaly, Los Angeles; Ludlow38, New York; and Gasworks, London. Her work was recently in the 2018 Taipei Biennale, the 2018 Athens Biennale, Made in L.A. 2018, Sharjah Biennial 2017, and group shows at Para Site, Hong Kong; ICA London; Ballroom Marfa; New Museum, New York; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and SculptureCenter, New York. She has had solo exhibitions at the Walter Phillips Gallery, Alberta, Canada (2019); Times Museum, Guangzhou (2020); Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Zealand (2020); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2021); Spike Island, Bristol (2021); and the Harvard Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Cambridge (2021).

About the work: 

Lone Pig is part of a series of paintings done with pigmented pig fat and wax. The series brings together two facets of research — the treatment of Chinese laborers in the US in the late 1800s and early 1900s (they were disparagingly called “pigs” on account of their queue hairstyles), and more recent immigration by across the US-Mexican border. Anthropologist Jason de Leon at UCLA has led a research program that uses pig carcasses to study the decomposition of flesh in desert conditions as a means of better understanding the deaths of migrants who perish crossing the deserts of the American Southwest. Lone Pig shows one of these pig carcasses dressed in human clothes — a surreal image but a realistic depiction of de Leon’s study.