Candice Lin’s Pigs and Poison - Exhibition Review

Content and Trigger Warning: This post and the exhibition it reviews, explores themes of colonialism and racism towards Asian people, including during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In a world of lockdowns and heightened racial tensions, Candice Lin’s exhibition at Bristol’s Spike Island gallery defiantly exposes history’s racist and oppressive rhetoric towards Asian people. Moving, emotional and disturbing, “Pigs and Poison” grapples with colonial histories and its associated material culture, and the discriminative narratives linking Asian people with disease and contagion.[1] With the coronavirus exacerbating such oppressive discourse, Lin’s work is of paramount significance and global importance. Arguably one of the most thought-provoking and raw exhibitions that Bristol has ever housed, Spike Island has excelled once again.

Truly powerful and emotive, Lin’s Pigs and Poison exemplifies the power of art as a political tool. The exhibition is centred around a brutal and austere wall, spanning the width of Spike Island’s main gallery space. Adjacent to the wall, a reconstruction of a medieval trebuchet has been placed, that fires lard cannonballs over the wall, onto the opposite gallery wall.

By recalling the medieval practice of hurling carcasses over castle battlements, the poignant installation explores the first instance of biological warfare: the 1346 siege of Caffa.[2] The siege is commonly labelled as the origin of the Black Death. Historical narratives state that the Mongol army launched plague-ridden cadavers over the city walls of Caffa, inflecting its inhabitants, with those fleeing the city spreading the Black Death across Europe and Asia.[3]

This historical linkage of migration and disease remains today, manifesting itself through increased racism and xenophobia in the recent coronavirus pandemic, through profiling of Asian individuals as carriers of the virus. Indeed, in the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic, research has exposed up to a 16% increase in racially motivated hate crimes towards Asian people in London.[4] It is this problematic and innately colonial view that Lin’s work interrogates, making her work so important today: Lin asks us to question the biases of society, their histories, and rightly encourages us to dismantle racist presentations of personhood.

The austere wall also speaks to the politics of exclusion, most notably Trumpian rhetoric surrounding immigration and border control. The wall presents a physical blockade, that is difficult to pass through: the viewer must crouch through a small hole in the wall to reach the other side of the space. Indeed, the symbol of the wall connotes oppression, surveillance and often violence, reiterated by the barbed wire atop it and the piercing eyes of the gate positioned in its centre. These eyes watch the viewer as they explore the gallery space, but also watch the firing of the trebuchet. Are these the eyes of the oppressor/bystander, or are they the tormented eyes of the Asian community?

Lin’s inclusion of the medieval trebuchet gives the installation a performative dimension with great historical significance. Whilst spreading awareness of the siege of Caffa, and thus the racist rhetoric surrounding Asian identity and disease. The trebuchet also criticises this narrative by virtue of being medieval: racist and oppressive notions of contagion are archaic. The trebuchet is fired daily at 2pm and 4pm, re-enacting the events of 1346 as though stuck in a loop, highlighting society’s lack of progression in dismantling racist narratives and biases.

The performative aspect of the trebuchet is amplified as the lard cannonball shatters against the opposite gallery wall, slowly covering it in its black pigment, creating a painting before our very eyes. The resultant smear of black pigment is unsettling in its violence and is reminiscent of a clawing hand.

The sense of struggle is amplified through the crumbling of the wall, which forms the shapes of Chinese calligraphy. The materiality of the wall – painted board resembling concrete – further creates a sense of weight, command and oppression. Lin’s work embodies feelings of entrapment and pain, and asks us to interrogate the underlying racism of the contemporary world, that has bubbled to the surface as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Lin’s interdisciplinary practice is epitomised at her Spike Island show, through use of unconventional materials such as lard, opium poppy stems, leaves, animal material, textiles and even virtual reality, alongside traditional painting and sculpture. Organic and grotesque biological forms mark the rest of the exhibition path, speaking to colonialist labels used to present Asian communities as animalistic.

This also draws upon living conditions under colonialism, and the associated dehumanisation. These forms resemble pig carcasses - harking back to the title of the exhibition – with bulging veins and discoloured flesh, some with large and gruesome injuries and cuts. These forms carry substantial emotive effect and play into the haunting atmosphere produced by Lin’s sculptures and paintings.

Emotive, difficult and powerful, Candice Lin’s Pigs and Poison is of significant importance, especially in a post-Covid world. The exhibition’s educational and activist stance renders it   essential viewing: Lin’s voice and message must be heard. See the exhibition at the Spike Island gallery, 133 Cumberland Road, Bristol BS1 6UX. The exhibition is free and available to view until the 8th of May 2022.

By Tom Dance - Art History Pathway, Commissioning Editor

Photography by Tom Dance

[1] ‘Candice Lin – Pigs and Poison’, Spike Island (2022) <https://www.spikeisland.org.uk/programme/exhibitions/candice-lin/> [last accessed 13 February 2022]

[2] Ibid.

[3] Mark Wheelis, ‘Biological Warfare at the 1346 Siege of Caffa’, Emerging Infections Diseases, 8: 9 (September 2002), 971 - 975 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2732530/

[4] Chelsea Gray, Kristine Hansen, ‘Did Covid-19 Lead to an Increase in Hate Crimes Toward Chinese People in London?’, Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 37: 4 (July 2021), 569-588