Artist Mel Chin will talk about his art and practice as attempts to provide and provoke greater social awareness of toxic situations found in both politics and the environment in the public lecture “Trouble in Mind” on Wednesday, November 15, at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Art Auditorium.
Chin’s sculpture practice bridges natural, political and social ecologies. In 1989, he developed Revival Field, a project that was a pioneer in the field of “green remediation,” the use of plants to remove toxic, heavy metals from the soil. From 1995 to 1998, Chin formed a collective that produced In the Name of the Place, a conceptual public art project conducted on the popular prime-time TV series, Melrose Place. In KNOWMAD, Chin worked with software engineers to create a video game based on rug patterns of nomadic people facing cultural disappearance. His hand-drawn, 24-minute film, 9-11/9-11, won the prestigious Pedro Sienna Award—the “Oscar” of Chile—for best animation in 2007.
His ongoing project, Fundred Dollar Bill/Operation Paydirt, focuses national awareness and prevention on childhood lead poisoning. A multi-venue exhibition of Chin’s work titled All Over the Place will be presented in New York City in the spring of 2018.
Chin was featured on PBS’ ART 21 series and has received numerous awards and grants from organizations such as the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council for the Arts, Art Matters, Creative Capital, and the Penny McCall, Pollock/Krasner, Joan Mitchell, Rockefeller and Louis Comfort Tiffany foundations, among others.
The free lecture is presented by the Dai Ho Chun Distinguished Chair in the UH Mānoa Colleges of Arts & Sciences.
More about the Dai Ho Chun Distinguished Chair
These events are made possible by the late Dai Ho Chun through his estate gift, which established The Dai Ho Chun Distinguished Chair Endowment in the Colleges of Arts & Sciences. Chun was a distinguished and visionary educator.
