Candice Lin: Lithium Sex Demons in the Factory / Taus Makhacheva: Tsumikh

Candice Lin: Lithium Sex Demons in the Factory 
Ground Floor, September 22–December 16, 2023 

Canal Projects is pleased to present the first New York solo institutional exhibition of Los Angeles-based artist Candice Lin, Lithium Sex Demons in the Factory. Co-commissioned by Canal Projects and the 14th Gwangju Biennale, the site-specific project replicates a lithium battery factory. 

Emulating a precarious site of manufacture, Lithium Sex Demons in the Factory features a large platform at the center of the ground-floor gallery, creating a vantage point from where visitors take on the surveillance gaze of a factory manager. Continuing the artist’s ongoing research on globalization, trade networks, materiality, and labor, the installation focuses on the extraction and production of lithium—a mineral that powers global mass consumption. 

On the ground surrounding the platform, ceramic fermentation vessels are connected by tubing to six manufacturing workstations that are mounted with ceramic computers and time clocks, whirring machines, and flickering motion-activated lights. At each workstation, sound, video animation, and text narrate the fictional lives of the lithium sex demons. Their story is based on a short text written by Lin, describing a sex demon’s quest to return from the dead to their lover in a lithium battery factory. Set among the fumes of soldering smoke, the installation depicts the banality of an assembly line possessed with dreams and passions that refuse to die. 

The story of the sex demon is a fiction that draws from various Asian myths and ghost lore, such as the Chinese hungry ghosts (èguǐ), Japanese shit-eating ghosts (gaki), and Malay penanggal that feast on menstrual blood. The demonic possession of factory workers also has a basis in reality, as documented by the scholar Aihwa Ong. In Lin’s work, however, these testimonies of toxicity become entwined with a story of bodily desire in the spiritual world, creating multiple layers around labor politics, queer love, and the materiality of our contemporary world.

About Candice Lin
Candice Lin (b. 1979) is known for multimedia installations that incorporate transitive materials and transformative substances that signal the porous nature of boundaries. Her work engages notions of gender, race, and sexuality, drawing from decolonial theory, anthropology, natural history, and feminist and queer theory.

Taus Makhacheva: Tsumikh (Avar for “At the Eagle’s”)
Lower Level, September 22–December 16, 2023 

This fall, Canal Projects will also host the US premiere of Taus Makhacheva’s newest film Tsumikh (Avar for “At the Eagle’s”). In the film, Makhacheva interrogates the fraught relationship between personal and public memory by revisiting how her late grandfather, Rasul Gamzatov (1923–2003)—a celebrated Soviet poet—is remembered.

The film was supported by Sharjah Art Foundation Production Grant, Sharjah and the Patrons Group at the Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture, Almaty, Kazakhstan. Full credit information can be found by visiting canalprojects.org.

Taus Makhacheva (b. 1983) creates works that explore the restless connections between historical narratives and fictions of cultural authenticity. Often humorous, her art considers the resilience of images, objects and bodies emerging out of stories and personal experiences. Her methodology involves reworking of materials, landscapes and monuments, pushing against walls, opening up ceilings and proliferating institutional spaces with a cacophony of voices. Makhacheva holds a BA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths (2007) and has an MFA from the Royal College of Art (2013). 

About Canal Projects
Canal Projects is a nonprofit contemporary arts organization dedicated to supporting forward-thinking local and international artists at pivotal moments in their careers. Through production, exhibition, research, and interpretation of this work, Canal Projects intends to foster artistic practices that challenge and reflect on the current moment. Canal Projects is supported by the YS Kim Foundation.

For press inquiries, images, or other information please contact
Evan Lenox, evan [​at​] culturalcounsel.com
Hannay Kay, hannah [​at​] culturalcounsel.com