Artist-in-Residence

Mel Chin

Mel Chin, in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia. Degrees of Paradise and Landscape, 1991. Photo credit: FWM Archives.

Mel Chin is a conceptual visual artist who works across a variety of media in subversive ways to challenge viewers by provoking social and political awareness. Chin has collaborated with FWM twice, first as an Artist-in-Residence in 1991 and again as an exhibiting artist nearly twenty years later, in 2010. 

In 1991, Mel Chin collaborated with The Fabric Workshop and Swarthmore College to complete his two-site installation Degrees of Paradise and Landscape. Chin’s study of a proposed State of Heaven, Degrees of Paradise was installed on the top floor of the FWM’s original Vine Street location overlooking the Philadelphia skyline.

Designed to mimic the depletion of the ozone, which the artist likened to “the unfolding of the petals of a fragile flower,” the installation was composed of two triangular-shaped rooms opposite one another with divergent yet complementary sculptural installations suspended from the ceiling. A small drawing on slate of an unfolding lotus served as the fulcrum between the rooms. On one side, Chin hung fourteen video monitors that display multi-dimensional fractal images chronicling the world’s weather mapped for one full day as recorded by scientists at McGill University. The images appeared in a triangular format on the monitors, a looped display of clouds moving across a blue sky. On the ceiling of the other room hung a hand-knotted 9’ x 23’ wool carpet made by Kurdish women in Damlacik, Turkey, during the beginning of the Gulf War—the influence of which could be detected in a helicopter form hidden in the design. The carpet depicted the women’s interpretation of the scientific satellite mappings, samples of which were given to them in still format. Degrees of Paradise and Landscape exemplifies Chin’s collaborative approach—consulting weavers, scientists, and computer programmers alike. It is also exemplary of his willingness to confront and dissect salient—and often political— issues like ozone depletion, environmental destruction, US imperialism and intervention in the Middle East. Operating inside the same installation, these themes are intertwined with spiritual belief, divine authority, and technology.  

Soon after this project, Mel Chin’s practice shifted toward a more direct, activist-based approach. His work has tackled a plethora of environmental threats both local and global, including soil pollution, impact awareness, and lead contamination. In 2010, The Fabric Workshop and Museum presented Chin’s Operation Paydirt, a creative campaign that engaged institutions and communities across the country to end lead poisoning. Visitors and children were invited to draw their own “Fundred Dollar Bills”—Chin’s way of actualizing the cost to end such a crisis.  

Throughout this and each of these projects, Chin continues to freely collaborate with scientists, craftsmen, and fellow artists, most notably through his S.O.U.R.C.E. collective, which engages in action-based artistic production. Internationally recognized and exhibited, Chin was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship in 2019 for his unique practice which defies categorization. 

Artist Bio

American, born in 1951 in Houston, TX. Lives in New York and Burnsville, NC. 

Mel Chin is a multidisciplinary artist whose work encompasses a broad range of socio-political topics, using science-based visual approach for promoting change. His methodologies often rely on collaboration, placing work in specific locations and environments in order to create a dialogue between himself, the audience, and large-scale themes he hopes to address. Chin graduated in 1975 from Peabody College in Nashville, TN. From 1995–1997, Chin and dozens of artists and makers, calling themselves The GALA Committee, initiated a “covert, collaborative, conceptual, public art project conducted on primetime television’s Melrose Place.” He is among the first artists to be featured in the acclaimed PBS series Art 21: Artists of the 21st Century, having participated in its first season in 2001. In 2017 he founded the S.O.U.R.C.E. Studio, which is focused on developing action-based artistic production that addresses human challenges.  

His work has been exhibited extensively both in the U.S. and internationally, including at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Boston, MA; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Spain; the Museum Het Domein, Sittard, Netherlands; the Thomas Rehbein Galerie, Cologne, Germany; Galerie Steinek, Vienna; and La Defense, Paris, France, among many others. He is the recipient of many awards and grants, and honorary degrees, including the Fritschy Culture Award, Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts, US & Canada, and the MacArthur Fellowship, awarded in 2019.