Ambrin Ling: Hidden, Harmless, Human鈥� & Armando Roman 鈥淓l Sol Infernal y la Semana Eterna鈥�
When are images considered safe? Who gets to be represented as human? Ambrin Ling鈥檚 works on paper鈥� paintings, drawings, and sculptural installations all on fibrous mediums鈥� respond to histories of innocuous image-making, particularly 18 th century American landscape art and domestic ornamentation. Rendering human figures, flowers, furniture, and natural vistas in bleeding watercolor pigments and on torn paper, she disturbs how these tame objects signify nation, the propertied citizen, and the sovereign self. In doing so, she reflects on how those considered objects of use, like land, like belongings, are in fact feeling, acting, vulnerable subjects, always inseparable from and in tension with their surroundings.
Ambrin Ling (she/they) received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MA in the Humanities from the University of Chicago. Her artwork has been included in numerous group and solo exhibitions, most recently at Woman Made Gallery and Northwestern University in Chicago, Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati, and the Thelma Saddoff Cultural Center in Wisconsin. She has received awards for her work and has participated in multiple artist residencies, including at the Chapman Cultural Center in South Carolina, the University of Kansas, and the Vermont Studio Center.
The work in this show is a collision of two series of drawings completed in the past year. Since 2016, I have been researching Trump-era Border politics and the eight border wall prototypes, drawing my own interpretations of them. The walls, like the Trump administration as a whole, were a failed effort in preventing Central Amercans from crossing into the United States. My drawings celebrate the futility, absurdity, and stupidity of these prototype walls by neutering them of their harsh material properties. I began to understand that the border was not the true enemy to migrants 鈥� the sun was. In another series of drawings, based on Catholic processions that occur in my father鈥檚 hometown in Mexico, I render religious events in combination with a harsh, ever-present sun. The sun is eternal; it always follows us. The sun guides migrants but ultimately it asphyxiates them. I draw on the relationship between border-crossing, religiosity, and expressions of the self through these two bodies of work.
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When are images considered safe? Who gets to be represented as human? Ambrin Ling鈥檚 works on paper鈥� paintings, drawings, and sculptural installations all on fibrous mediums鈥� respond to histories of innocuous image-making, particularly 18 th century American landscape art and domestic ornamentation. Rendering human figures, flowers, furniture, and natural vistas in bleeding watercolor pigments and on torn paper, she disturbs how these tame objects signify nation, the propertied citizen, and the sovereign self. In doing so, she reflects on how those considered objects of use, like land, like belongings, are in fact feeling, acting, vulnerable subjects, always inseparable from and in tension with their surroundings.
Ambrin Ling (she/they) received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MA in the Humanities from the University of Chicago. Her artwork has been included in numerous group and solo exhibitions, most recently at Woman Made Gallery and Northwestern University in Chicago, Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati, and the Thelma Saddoff Cultural Center in Wisconsin. She has received awards for her work and has participated in multiple artist residencies, including at the Chapman Cultural Center in South Carolina, the University of Kansas, and the Vermont Studio Center.
The work in this show is a collision of two series of drawings completed in the past year. Since 2016, I have been researching Trump-era Border politics and the eight border wall prototypes, drawing my own interpretations of them. The walls, like the Trump administration as a whole, were a failed effort in preventing Central Amercans from crossing into the United States. My drawings celebrate the futility, absurdity, and stupidity of these prototype walls by neutering them of their harsh material properties. I began to understand that the border was not the true enemy to migrants 鈥� the sun was. In another series of drawings, based on Catholic processions that occur in my father鈥檚 hometown in Mexico, I render religious events in combination with a harsh, ever-present sun. The sun is eternal; it always follows us. The sun guides migrants but ultimately it asphyxiates them. I draw on the relationship between border-crossing, religiosity, and expressions of the self through these two bodies of work.
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