Rhyming the Land

with Hai-Wen Lin & Manal Shoukair
SCULPTURE 688 001 | 1.5 credits | $100 Lab Fee
August 4 - 10, 2024

This course is an exploration of land art, installation, and performance art that uses poetry as a framework to think about sculpting. As a class, we will consider the poem and its structures (rhyme, meter, stanza, verse) as form, material, and method. We will begin with a series of exercises that develop a relationship between writing, the land, and our bodies. Techniques demonstrated will include mold making, field recording, movement mapping, basic metal and woodwork. This is not a poetry class, but a class of poetic making and will entail mapping, listening, walking, sharing, caring, speaking, humming, singing, dancing, and meditating as forms of writing and research. We hope to challenge conventional understandings of the separation between body and environment by situating ourselves directly within the land. We will consider the works of artists such as Ana Mendieta, Liu Bolin, Richard Long, Andy Goldsworthy, Mierle laderman Ukeles, and Rebecca Horn. Readings and screenings may include Braiding Sweetgrass, the Tao Te Ching, and Leaning Into the Wind. The final project is the construction of a duet poem wherein one part originates from the artist’s body and one part originates from the landscape.

Hai-Wen Lin is a Taiwanese-American artist whose work explores constructions of the body and its surrounding environment. They are an alumnus of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, previously a LeRoy Neiman Fellow at the Ox-Bow School of Art, and earned a Master of Design in Fashion, Body and Garment from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where they were selected as a Fashion Future Graduate by the CFDA upon graduating. Lin has published research on smart textiles and taught origami technique workshops at UC Davis, UC Berkeley, and MIT. They have performed publicly at the Chicago Cultural Center and MU Gallery, and have exhibited work in a variety of places including the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, 3S Artspace in New Hampshire, the Pittsburgh Glass Center, the walls of their home, their friend’s home, within an envelope, on a plate, on a lake, and in the sky.

Hai-Wen Lin, Untitled (Sun Being), 2023, drop cloth, air float charcoal, tape, string, approx. 72 × 72 × 72 in.

Manal Shoukair is a Lebanese-American artist whose work in video performance, sculpture, and site-specific installations explore the complex intersectionality of her multicultural identity, Islamic spirituality, and contemporary femininity. Shoukair’s installation work directs the viewer in space that is only partially physically accessible, forcing the feeling of being left out or cut off. It prompts the viewer to explore a space physically, psychologically and culturally; methodologies that parallel her intuitive practice. The work navigates a conscious space of being and reflection of place and directs awareness inward, engulfing its audience in the stillness of its gesture. Manal has been featured in art publications, including Hyperallergic, Sculpture Magazine and the Detroit Metro Times. Manal holds a BFA from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit and is a recent MFA graduate from the Sculpture and Extended Media Department at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is a recipient of the Master’s Thesis Grant from Virginia Commonwealth University, the Gilda Award from the Kresge Foundation, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Fellowship and the Vermont Studio Center Fellowship.

Manal Shoukair, memento, 2021, solid bronze cast of starling, 4 x 7 x 6 in.