Lin Yilin (born in Guangzhou, China, 1964) is a performance and installation artist who currently lives and works in New York and Beijing. Lin graduated with a degree in sculpture from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts (1987).His work has been exhibited globally in solo and group exhibitions. Lin Yilin is a founding member of the Big Tail Elephant Group. The Big Tail Elephant Group is an artist collective founded in 1990 by Lin Yilin, Chen Shaoxiong, and Liang Juhui and later joined by Xu Tan. The group formed in Guangzhou, China, with an interest in urban development and the rapid transformation of modern cities, Guangzhou being among the earliest cities in China to undergo this shift. Lin produced site-specific installations, public artworks, and performances to express his perspective on Guangzhou’s rapid social and political transformation. Lin was the recipient of the Foundation Catier pour I’Art Contemporain Grant (1993), the Contemporary Chinese Art Award (2000), and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2001), Kadist Art Foundation Grant (2011), and Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship (2013). Lin first exhibited work with Big Tail Elephant in 1991 at the Guangzhou No.1 Worker’s Palace, Guangzhou, China, and regularly continued to show work with the collective through the 2000s. In 1997 Lin participated in Trade Routes: History and Geography, 2nd Johannesburg Biennale, South Africa. Then in 1998 he was included in Inside Out, New Chinese Art, presented by the Asia Society at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, USA, as well as the 1998 Taihei Biennale at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan. Select group exhibitions include Another Long March: Chinese Conceptual Art (1997), Breda, The Netherlands; Cities on the Move (1997) at Vereinigung bildender Kunstler Wiener Secession, Vienna, Austria; Second Johannesburg Biennale (1997) in South Africa; Big Tail Elephant (1998) at Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, Switzerland; Taipei Biennale (1998) in Taiwan; Inside Out: New Chinese Art (1998) at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, USA; Pause, Fourth Gwangju Biennale (2002), Gwangju, South Korea; 50th Venice Biennale (2003), Venice, Italy; Guangzhou Triennial (2002 and 2005) at the Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China; Documenta 12 (2007), Kassel, Germany, 10th Biennale de Lyon (2009) at the Lyon Museum of Contemporary Art, Lyon, France; Seventh Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale (2012) at OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, Shenzhen, China; and Le Mouvement: Performing the City (2014), the 12th Swiss Sculpture Exhibition, Biel/Bienne, Switzerland. Lin’s first solo exhibition, Move On: Lin Yilin (2004) was presented at the ISE Cultural Foundation, New York, USA, and included installation, paintings, video, and performance. Through this exhibition Lin highlighted his concern with cultural identity and boundary crossing. Select solo exhibitions include A Spatio-Temporal Tunnel (2008) at Shanghai Gallery of Art, Shanghai, China; Golden Journey (2012) at San Francisco Art Institute, USA; and Holiday (2013) at Edicola Notte, Rome, Italy.
Big Tail Elephant was a four-member artists’ collective active in Guangzhou, China, from 1991 to 1998, the first such group in South China to employ multimedia art forms, photography, performance, installation, and video. While maintaining their individual artistic practices, the members—an advertisement designer, two teachers from the Guangzhou Art Academy, and a TV station worker—gathered…
“ ‘大尾象’ 这个词就象西方古代哲学家对自然的最终解释是上帝这个词。这是一种理念起作用，而不是某一个具体的人。”——林一林 This is a transcript of a meeting of the Big Tail Elephant Group that took place in 1993. Read the English translation here. 林一林整理 “大尾象工作组”成立于1990年底。1991年1月和1992年10月，曾经在广州举办了两次大型展览。1993年7月， “大尾象”举行了这次讨论会，参加讨论会的人仅限于这个工作组的成员，因而我充当半个发问人开始了这次的讨论会，讨论的方向主要是“大尾象工作组”的活动特点，它所处的文化背景及其成员的艺术观念和作品情况。 林一林：徐坦， 你的艺术风格已经很成熟了，并且你的作品在中国同行的眼里也不太陌生，作为你这样的艺术家完全可以按自己原有的思路继续走下去，什么原因令你加入“大尾象工作组”呢？ 徐坦： 作为新近加入“大尾象工作组”的新成员，我和“大尾象”的成员在艺术上的合作已经有一段不短的时间了。我觉得“大尾象”有一个很大的特点， 我相信这种特点在世界上任何一个地方都具有特殊的价值。在这个工作组里，每位艺术家的个人创造都会得到鼓励和支持，你会感到创造性思维的活跃，这里总是处于一种自由的状态，大家在一起工作预示着一种力量，是一中深远的潜在力。我们抱有对未来的信心在于我们工作的结构方式具有开放性。 梁钜辉： 除了你刚才所说的，“大尾象”对你最有吸引力的，是否还有别的什么？ 徐坦： 这个工作组有一种神秘的凝聚力，有一种共同的东西。很多人问过“大尾象”的共同点是什么，我发现大家都说不出来，但我们都意识到确实是有共同之处， 这种共同点有待别人或我们去发现。 别人谈到南方的形而上缺少和生活中的神秘因素，我想在这点上具有魅力和不可说的… …。 梁钜辉: 在“南方艺术家沙龙”的时候，我和林一林、陈劭雄开始合作，到现在已经有7年了。就象你所说的，这种神秘力量把我们结合在一起。 陈劭雄：我们的共同点是区别于其他的艺术群体的做法， 如“大尾象”没有什么核心人物， 假如工作组里少了任何一个人， “大尾象”仍然还存在，很奇怪，它具有凝聚力， 但又没有核心。 林一林： 这个核心就是“大尾象”这个词。 徐坦： 我想起德里达关于中心的一个问题，他谈到中心既不存在某个结构之内，也不存在于某个结构之外， 就好像一个乐团， 谁是中心？ 有人认为指挥是中心， 有人认为第一提琴手是中心，…
