Portfolio: Hings Lim
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Specter in th Gate
Installation view
February 3 – May 12, 2024
Grand Central Art Center, Santa Ana
This project delves into the historical progression of political, economic, and cultural machines, centering on the 1906 burning of Santa Ana’s Chinatown, located adjacent to the former Santa Ana City Hall. This critical incident not only exemplifies the extensive history of biased urban planning and development practices in California but also serves as a poignant reminder of how collective memory and historical narratives are shaped and reshaped over time.
Specter in th Gate
Installation view
February 3 – May 12, 2024
Grand Central Art Center, Santa Ana
This project is driven by the notion of perspective machines – technology such as cameras, projectors, and mappings. These mediums extend beyond mere technological use; they act as conduits through which the multifaceted layers of history and memory are examined and presented.
The interplay between technology, history, and memory conjures the tangible and intangible legacies that span time, linking past, present, and future, with a body of works consisting of objects, photographs, moving images, and real-time projection mapping installation.
Gateway to Santa Ana’s Chinatown
2024
Human hair, brass, fiberglass mesh, acrylic medium, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS)
Featured in the exhibition is an installation comprising two towering structures, built from brass tubes, and layered with human hair that were collected from several local salons run by members of the Latinx community. The hair, a remnant from the community, materializes a cross-temporal and spatial collective memory, weaving together the history ingrained within the people on this land.
These unfinished towers reference ceremonial gateways found in traditional Chinese architecture and echo the arches that are often emblematic of Chinatown. Simultaneously, it creates a parallel narrative, juxtaposing the historical migration of the Chinese with the contemporary migration experiences of the Latino communities.
Their Shapes
2024
Archival pigment ink on Platine Fibre Rag, emulsion transfer on abrasion resistant UV filter acrylic, museum board, wooden frame
Their Shapes is a series of historical photographs from the Santa Ana History Room collection, featuring typical group photos of white individuals seated in front of the old Santa Ana City Hall. A top layer of plexiglass over each photograph contains an emulsion transferred ghostly image of a group of Chinese individuals, generated using a diffusion-based generative AI model.
The act of posing for group portraits in front of authoritative institutions has historically served as a performative assertion of power and dominance, with non-white representation in such contexts being notably absent. This series employs generative AI tools as a means of intervention, reimagining these archival images to challenge their legacies and the power structures they perpetuate.
Their Shapes
2024
Archival pigment ink on Platine Fibre Rag, emulsion transfer on abrasion resistant UV filter acrylic, museum board, wooden frame
Homo Lanterns (City Hall)
2024
Real-time simulation, projection mapping; projectors, tripod, computer, electric cords
Featuring movement of lights, projectors on tripods, and a computer simulating in real time, this installation utilizes projection mapping as a technique as well as a conceptual framework. A subtle shadow on the floor is seemingly casted by an invisible, shape-shifting object suspended in mid-air. At certain moments, shadows cast through an unseen doorway recall the original Santa Ana City Hall built in 1904.
This installation, propelled by the notion of the perspective machine, delves into the institutionalization of political, economic, and cultural mechanisms. It suggests how these apparatuses may represent a unitary, imperialistic, or colonial worldview, shaping notions of inclusion and exclusion. Considered as performing beings, this installation invites a critical interrogation into the technical and conceptual aspects of these interrelated apparatuses, haunted by the unseen.
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At Night (Santa Ana’s Chinatown)
2024
Single channel video with stereo audio, duration 6 minutes 29 seconds, continuous loop; projection screen, projector, speakers, antique theater seats.
A white screen, suspended from above, cascades like a curtain, serving as the backdrop for the backlit projection of a CGI-rendered fire engulfing Santa Ana’s Chinatown. This digital reconstruction is informed by historical Sanborn fire maps of the era. My extensive research uncovered a single photograph, purportedly capturing the Chinatown in flames. Using this reference, along with other historical data, I reenacted the tragic night of the fire through digital means. The flames burn in an endless loop, symbolizing a perpetually narrative.
Resembling the cinematic style prevalent during the early film industry’s boom, the video includes intertitles derived from archived news articles reporting on the Chinatown. These texts starkly expose the era’s profound biases and racial prejudices.
At Night (Santa Ana’s Chinatown)
2024
Single channel video with stereo audio, duration 6 minutes 29 seconds, continuous loop; projection screen, projector, speakers, antique theater seats.
*The video may take a few seconds to load.
Flaming Tower
2021/2023
Wax, wicks, dye, and aluminum
Flaming Tower is a durational sculpture composed of wax, wicks, dye, and aluminum. Drawing inspiration from Paleolithic bifaces—one of the earliest technology dating back over 300,000 years—the piece features wax replicas cast from 3D models of actual archaeological artifacts. Mounted atop an aluminum tripod, these wax bifaces are lit, melting gradually and transforming over time. This process reflects on the mutability of materials and the passage of time, contemplating the evolution of human technology from ancient tools to modern mechanisms. The work invites viewers to consider the intersections of utility, aesthetics, and the ephemeral nature of existence.
Bifaces
2021
Wax, wicks, dye, and polyurethane foam
Bifaces is an installation featuring unlit wax replicas of Paleolithic bifaces—hand axes dating back over 300,000 years—cast from 3D models of museum artifacts. These wax bifaces are arranged on a grooved layer of crating foam, typically used for museum, weaponry, and electrical storage. By reintroducing these ancient tools in a new material context, the piece transforms them into technological, functional, aesthetic, and ritual objects. The work invites contemplation on the evolution of technology and the shifting meanings of objects over time.
Studies of Breast to Brain metastatic cancer cells and IL13
2022
Single-channel video with stereo sound, duration 1 minute 19 seconds, continuous loop.
In collaborating with the brain metastases research by Dr. Josh Neman from the Laboratory of Cancer Neuroscience at Keck School of Medicine of USC, “Studies of Breast to Brain metastatic cancer cells and IL13” poses a sequence of overlooks of a landscape of plateaus, in the middle of ocean that forms a monumental island. Based on the research data obtained by the lab, the plateaus are the reconstruction of the z-stack fluorescence microscopy of the cancer cells and the targeted proteins. The cellular and molecular nonhuman actors are scaled, simulated, and rendered. Thinking beyond data representation, this project probes into the apparatus of scientific research, in this case the research led by Dr. Neman in seeking the why and how of the migration of cancer cells that cause brain metastases. As a series, “Studies of…” forms a cluster of islands, an archipelago, that we yearn to sail to, and maybe someday we will ashore.
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Imperceptible: machine, animal, plant, stone, skull
July 2 – 10, 2021
Roski Mateo Gallery, Los Angeles
This exhibition proposes a rumination on the space between human and nonhuman. Underlying this body of work are the varied cultural and spiritual influences present in my home region of Southeast Asia. This body of work employs technology, alternate reality, ritual, and artifact as mechanisms that expose and explore a specific liminality. This liminality, however, is not static, but rather, constantly moving and essential to the in-flux and cyclical nature of becoming.
Monolith
2021
Real-time simulation, projection; hydraulic pedestal, computer, aluminum, nickel plated steel, electric cords; projector
Monolith is an interactive installation using real-time simulation, featuring a computer sculpture and video projection. It presents a dark, upright monolithic form hovering within a swirling cloudscape at dusk. Acting as a performing entity, the sculpture responds to every noise in the space, captured by its antenna. When participants scream toward the monolith, the projected form quivers, ripples, collapses, and ultimately disappears, creating an uncanny dance between viewer and the monolith. The piece explores themes of presence, perception, and the complex relationship between humans and technology, examining public acts of disobedience and the fragmentation of the unitary subject.
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Homo Lanterns
2020
Real-time simulation, projection mapping; projectors, tripod, computer, electric cords.
Homo Lanterns is a projection mapping project utilizing real-time CGI technology to examine the historicity of architecture and its interplay with time, space, and technological mediation. The work draws on the iconic window design of the British Natural History Museum, a hallmark of Western institutional architecture, and its broader symbolic connections to colonial and imperial machines.
Concerning the advancement of technology in a larger sense, this project is propelled by the invention of perspective machine, cartography, camera, and projector to the institutionalization of political, economical, and cultural machines. However, as a performing apparatus, this project invites the rethinking of the past and what kind of future could be envisioned – by interrogate into the technical and conceptual notion of the interrelated apparatuses.
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Inflaming Machines
September 6 – October 7, 2023
island gallery, New York
Inflaming (Circular), 2023
Participatory installation; wax, wicks, dye, limestone, soapstone, buckwheat cushions, and fire resistant vinyl tarps
Tofu I-IX, 2023
Papier-mâché, tofu cloth, and acrylic medium
Witness of Land (Historic Palm Tree at Exposition Park)
2021
AR performance, mobile application.
Full HD screen recording, duration 6 minutes 30 seconds.
Performed by Hings Lim with the Historic Palm Tree at Exposition Park, Los Angeles, California on January 3, 2021. GPS coordinates: 34.01408625258346, -118.28327840069015
Witness of Land is a performance project that invites participants to maneuver the augmented reality (AR) application to bring forth the presence of witness trees. Upon the arboreal survivor and landmark in a neighborhood, the absence of the past is summoned, and the incantations are performed to conjure the memories of land while recalling the human history that still haunts.
Feast
2018
4K Ultra HD two-channel video installation,
duration 11 minutes 45 seconds.
Feast is a two-channel video installation that depicts an outdoor video screening took place at Rimbun Dahan, a fourteen acres art center with a compound of indigenous jungle outside of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The left-channel is the video being screened during the event and the right-channel is the documentation of the screening itself.
During the event, spectators were invited to wear a mosquito mesh robe, walk through the jungle in the dark, pass by a bonfire, and witness a screen of video projection at the end of the path. The enchantment of watching a fire being poked at in a hearth sets against the streaming of video on a huge screen hung between trees. The screen and its light, in relation to the spaces in it and around it, are my attempt to orchestrate a situation that discerns the urgency to rethink our existence in relation to the technological world that we have constructed.
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Untitled (with Dwi, Rian, Welly, and Siti)
2017
4K Ultra HD video duration 20 minutes; acrylic on jute; performance.
In collaboration with domestic workers, this body of work wields the act of cleaning as the process of art-making. Domestic workers are hired to maintain a clean canvas as I execute paint onto the surface. The canvas records traces of tension resulted in the oscillation between the sense of duty and the mode of expression by the cleaners/painters. By juxtaposing the domestic work and the experience of art-making, the role of the “laborer” and the “artist” is reshuffled and decontextualized. This constant switching of roles disrupts the egocentric supremacy of artistic expression while appropriating the open authorship of an artwork.
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