Lin Tianmiao’s practice literally weaves feminist critique into its materials. Her signature installations wrap household objects in thread, linking tradition and modernisation. As AWARE notes, “using thin threads, Lin interweaves gender awareness” with everyday sewing and weaving. In this way, Lin transforms the repetitive labour of domestic sewing into sculptural language – everyday tasks of invisible labour become visible motifs. The thread thus becomes both medium and metaphor: the material itself evokes routines of maternal responsibility.
Invisible Labour and Bodily Constraint
In works like Mother’s!!! (2008) and More or Less the Same (2011), Lin makes the invisible labour of women painfully tangible. For example, More or Less the Same arranges tools and synthetic bones bound in silk thread. Every bone is “identical in hierarchy… culture… classes“, suggesting a time poverty shared by all women. Viewers must navigate around these knotted ‘tool-body hybrids’, viscerally enacting the bodily constraints of domestic drudgery.
Lin Tianmiao, More or Less the Same, 2011
Similarly, Mother’s!!! cocoons cradles and chairs in nets, embodying motherhood as a relentless “second shift” that physically confines women and steals their personal time.
Lin Tianmiao,《Mother’s!!!》
Language and Gendered Time
Her recent work, Protruding Patterns (2017), addresses language itself. Lin collected thousands of sexist phrases and wove them into antique carpets. Visitors literally walk over the embroidered expressions (“leftover women”, “goddess”, etc.), making tangible the hidden lexicon of gender norms. This immersive tapestry of words turns invisible cultural codes into physical texture – aligning with Invisible Hours by exposing how everyday language and beauty-ritual clichés quietly police women’s bodies and schedules.
In this way, Lin’s work performs a phenomenology of labour: it invites audiences to feel the weight of routine labour repetitiveness and the extracted time that capitalism invisibly takes from women’s lives.
Lin Tianmiao, Protruding Patterns, Galerie Lelong & Co
In sum, Lin Tianmiao’s art transforms mundane domestic materials and repetitive tasks into embodied critiques of gendered time. Her installations enlist the viewer’s body as a witness to the ‘invisible’ routines of unpaid work. This is why I selected Lin Tianmiao as one of the core artists for Invisible Hours.
Resource:
Lin tianmiao’s Works：https://ocula.com/artists/lin-tianmiao/
Exhibition view: Lin Tianmiao, Protruding Patterns, Galerie Lelong & Co., New York (7 September-21 October 2017). Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co., New York. Photo: Lin Tianmiao：https://ocula.com/art-galleries/galerie-lelong-new-york/exhibitions/protruding-patterns/
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