Fermented Face with Candice Lin

Fermented Face is a workshop that uses facial massage and a guided meditation to ask questions about bodily borders, ideas of porosity and contamination, and the importance of touch in these contemporary times. Participants will be mailed a small vial of artist-made salve with live microorganisms and will massage this into their face or another part of their body according to guided instructions. After the meditation, participants will journal and share aspects of their experience. 

Once registered for this event, please email your preferred shipping address to ians@henryart.org. Because this workshop requires a mailed component, please register by February 18 to ensure receipt of your kit. Kits should arrive the week of February 26. Due to timing and shipping constraints, as well as customs restrictions, mailed kits will be limited to registrants residing in the U.S. 

Candice Lin (b. 1979, Concord, Massachusetts) works in Altadena, California. She received her BA in Visual Arts and Art Semiotics from Brown University, in 2001, and MFA in New Genres from San Francisco Art Institute, in 2004. Her practice utilizes installation, drawing, video, and living materials and processes, such as mold, mushrooms, bacteria, fermentation, and stains. Lin has had solo exhibitions at the Pitzer Galleries, Claremont, CA; Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Art Center, Canada; Ludlow 38, New York; Francois Ghebaly, Los Angeles, as well as the exhibition cycle A Hard White Body at Bétonsalon, Paris; Portikus, Frankfurt; and the Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago. Lin’s work has been featured in group exhibitions, including the 2020 Ashkal Alwan Home Works 8 Forum; 2019 Fiskars Village Art & Design Biennale; 2018 Taipei Biennale; 2018 Athens Biennale; Made in L.A. 2018, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; New Museum, New York; and Sharjah Biennial 2017, Beirut, Lebanon. She is the recipient of several residencies, grants, and fellowships, including the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant (2019), The Artists Project Award (2018), Louis Comfort Tiffany Award (2017), the Davidoff Art Residency (2018), and Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2009). 

Fermented Face is presented in the context of the Bugs &  Beasts Before the Law Colloquium, an interdisciplinary forum that examines the way sociolegal systems mediate and oppress personhood, while leveraging the power of art to explore possibilities of survival and collective liberation. The colloquium takes inspiration from the film Bugs & Beasts Before the Law (2019) by the artist collaboration Bambitchell, and which is scheduled to be on view at the Henry in winter/spring 2021.