The Delayed Everyday: Lacquer Art by Dalian-based Lin Tao

Description

As inspiration for his creative work, Lin Tao constantly searches for, collects and preserves stories from one of the most ordinary forms of popular media—the newspaper. Many local news articles and their accompanying photographs depict everyday mishaps endured by the common people: traffic jams, industrial accidents, governmental mistakes.

These small disasters of urban life are generally regarded as trivial, without either political or historical significance, and are easily overlooked and forgotten. Yet Lin Tao believes they can act as reminders to his audience to pay closer attention to issues of social morality and the yearning for a better life. He reverses the tendency to trivialize these stories by transforming images from news photos into complex pieces out of lacquer and mother-of-pearl inlay.