FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 9, 2021

Contact: Sarah Amacker, LSU MOA Communications Coordinator, samacker1@lsu.edu
Curator: Courtney Taylor, Curator of LSU MOA, cptaylor@lsu.edu

BATON ROUGE, La. — LSU Museum of Art (LSU MOA) will present Candice Lin: The Agnotology of Tigers this fall at LSU Museum of Art (LSU MOA) from October 20, 2021 through March 20, 2022. This exhibition is part of an annual collaboration featuring an LSU School of Art visiting artist. Candice Lin: The Agnotology of Tigers will feature recent works based on archival images from LSU alongside a new configuration of Lin’s tobacco version of La Charada China. Central to Lin’s project, La Charada China (pictured above) features a stereotypical “coolie” figure made of pressed tobacco leaves alongside other plants and materials entangled in the indentured Chinese labor trade. The installation derives from a syncretic, divination-type gambling game practiced in the Caribbean primarily by Chinese laborers. In Lin's hands, she speculates that this game could have functioned within the community as a way to redistribute wealth. A distillation system drips a tincture of tobacco, tea, sugar, and poppy onto an unfired porcelain sculpture. This tincture of valuable colonial commodities speaks to the intertwined histories of plants and humans both within plantation economies and herbal medicine. As it drips, it erodes the unfired porcelain—metaphorically dismantling the presumed associations of whiteness with purity, superiority, and hardness. In this exhibition, Lin will work with students at LSU to create the porcelain sculpture that will later be destroyed in the liquid process.

Lin’s installation illuminates sublimated histories of social violence and a politics of forgetting that obscures the history of indentured Chinese labor and its dehumanizing effects still manifest in global policies and lingering stereotypes. Lin’s most recent works explore how these processes intersect with LSU football’s “Chinese-bandits” and cheerleaders who dressed as coolie laborers.

ABOUT THE ARTIST Candice Lin works primarily in sculpture and installation. Born in Concord, MA, Lin now lives and works in Los Angeles where she serves as Assistant Professor of Art at UCLA. Lin is also a Prospect.5 artist: work featured as part of Prospect.5 will further explore her research into Louisiana’s history of indentured Chinese labor.

PROGRAMS:

OPENING RECEPTION AT LSU MUSEUM OF ART
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 6–8 P.M.
LSU Museum of Art (5th floor of the Shaw Center for the Arts) Join LSU MOA in the galleries with LSU School of Art visiting artist Candice Lin to celebrate the opening of the exhibition, Candice Lin: The Agnotology of Tigers. Masks required. Limited space to maintain social distancing. Open to the public.

VISITING ARTIST LECTURE AT LSU SCHOOL OF ART
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 5 P.M., 103 Design Building
Lecture by visiting artist Candice Lin at the LSU School of Art. Masks required. Limited space to maintain social distancing. Open to the public.
This exhibition is a collaboration between the LSU College of Art & Design, the LSU School of Art, and the LSU Museum of Art. Support is provided by The Winifred and Kevin P. Reilly Jr. Fund and generous donors to the Annual Exhibition Fund. LSU MOA is supported in part by a grant from the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge, funded by the East Baton Rouge Parish Mayor-President and Metro Council. LSU MOA is supported by a grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Office of Cultural Development, Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, in cooperation with the Louisiana State Arts Council. Funding has also been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.

IMAGE (artwork above): Candice Lin, La Charada China (Tobacco Version), 2019, cement with casein paint, welded steel table frame, tobacco, ceramics, distillation system (distilling a tincture of tobacco, sugar, tea, and poppy), poppy pod putty, sugarcane, white sugar, cacao, sage, ackee, oak gall, Anadenanthera, dong quai, California clay, Dominican Republic clay, metal parts, bucket, pumps, tubing, dried indigo, glass slides, bottles, drawings, tile, rubber, wood, Courtesy of the Artist and François Ghebaly Gallery, Photography by Ian Byer-Gamber

Visit LSU Museum of Art’s Facebook and Instagram pages @lsumoa regularly for program announcements and exhibition updates. For more information: www.lsumoa.org

ABOUT LSU MUSEUM OF ART
LSU Museum of Art seeks to enrich and inspire through collections, exhibitions, conservation, and education, serving as a cultural and intellectual resource for the University, Baton Rouge, and beyond.
LSU Museum of Art is supported in part by a grant from the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge, funded by the East Baton Rouge Parish Mayor-President and Metro Council. Additional support is provided by generous donors to the Annual Exhibition Fund, members, and community partners. Supported by a grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Office of Cultural Development, Department of Culture Recreation and Tourism, in cooperation with the Louisiana State Arts Council. Funding has also been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support provided by Art Bridges and Junior League of Baton Rouge. Thank you to the following sponsors of Free Friday Nights and Free First Sundays at LSU MOA: Louisiana Lottery Corporation and IBERIABANK, a division of First Horizon, for sponsoring free admission and Louisiana CAT for sponsoring programming.

VISITOR INFORMATION
The museum is located in downtown Baton Rouge at 100 Lafayette Street on the Fifth Floor of the Shaw Center for the Arts. General admission is $5 each for adults and children age 13 and over. Admission is free to university faculty and students with ID, children age 12 and under, and museum members. Active duty military members, first responders, and their families receive free admission with ID as part of the Blue Star Museums program. Masks are required during museum visitation and LSU MOA no-touch digital gallery resources can be accessed here: www.lsumoa.org/digital Museum Hours of operation are Tuesday through Saturday 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Thursday and Friday 10 a.m.-8 p.m.; Sunday 1-5 p.m.; and closed on Mondays and major holidays. Free admission occurs on the first Sunday of each month and every Friday night from 5-8 p.m. For more information: visit www.lsumoa.org, call 225-389-7200, and follow the museum on social media @lsumoa for exhibition and program updates. Masks are required during the pandemic.

###