Candice Lin: The Sex Life of Stone

Candice Lin explores the intersection of climate change, colonial legacies and the politics of power inscribed into bodies and the natural world in her practice, which spans ceramics, video, textiles and installation.

Candice Lin: The Sex Life of Stone is the first Australian solo exhibition by the Los Angeles-based artist and includes a new installation alongside two recent bodies of work.

By drawing together overlooked histories and subversive fictions, Lin probes the construction of race, gender, animality and humanness to disorder these categories. The exhibition takes its title, The Sex Life of Stone, from an essay by scholar Jeffery J. Cohen. The essay explores the live-ness of minerals through a queer ecologies lens and seeks to broaden the disciplinary boundaries of what constitutes life.

In her choice of materials, Lin traces the histories and trade of various goods in relation to imperialism, racialised and gendered labour, and human-animal kinship. This exhibition explores manganese, lithium and diverse plant matter, and other materials, examining their movement across the world on various economic, spiritual and cultural currents.

The exhibition is accompanied by the publication of a specially commissioned science fiction story by Canadian writer Larissa Lai, in the form of a booklet poster designed by the artist with Žiga Testen and Stuart Geddes.

Advisory:

This exhibition contains adult content including animated depictions, graphic illustrations and discussions of sexual interaction between humans and animals.
One gallery of the exhibition includes flashing images and a rotating screen.
Viewer discretion is advised. For further information, please ask a MUMA staff member.

Artist biography:

Candice Lin (b. 1979, Concord, US) is based in Los Angeles. Lin currently holds the position of Assistant Professor of Art at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has exhibited widely including recent solo exhibitions The Animal Husband, Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburhg (2024); Seeping, Rotting, Resting, Weeping, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2021); The Glittering Cloud, Kunsthalle Osnabrück (2021); and Stressed Herms, Sweat, & Period Gas, Institute of Contemporary Arts, New York University, Shanghai (2020). Selected group exhibitions include the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (2022); 13th Gwangju Biennale (2021); MOMENTA Biennale de l’image, Montreal (2021); and Prospect.5 New Orleans Triennial (2021).

Access information:

Physical access: MUMA is a ground-floor, wheelchair-accessible gallery with accessible and all-gender bathrooms. Gallery spaces are on a level surface. Contact us for a parking map or further information.
What to expect: Videos with sound and sculptural installations with moving parts and water, dark environments.
Visually described tours: Get in touch by email to muma@monash.edu or phone 03 9905 4217 to make an appointment for a visually described tour (for blind or low vision visitors).

Acknowledgements:

Candice Lin's work I breathe through my anus (night stone), 2024, is co-commissioned by Monash University Museum of Art and the Biennale of Sydney with generous support from Terra Foundation for American Art and MUMA Contemporaries.

^{Image: Candice Lin, Lithium Sex Demons in the Factory, 2023. Commissioned by Canal Projects and the 14th Gwangju Biennale. Installation view, Canal Projects, New York, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist, Canal Projects and François Ghebaly Gallery. Photo: Izzy Leung.}