Lotus L. Kang

An exploration of the human body through photography and sculpture

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Lotus L. Kang’s latest work, In Cascades, on view at Vancouver’s Contemporary Art Gallery until Jan. 7, is deceptive in its simplicity. More than 20 sheets of unfixed photographic film, or “skins,” as the artist calls them, drop to the floor from 8 industrial steel joists suspended from the ceiling. Sensitive to light and humidity, the sheets slowly change colour and, thus meaning, over the course of the exhibition.

The work is a joint commission from the Contemporary Art Gallery and the Chisenhale Gallery in London, where In Cascades opened in June. While most of us associate the word “cascade” with falling water, Kang interprets “cascade” as a continual accumulation of experience which is stored and then unfurled, “an accrual of information, of other bodies, of environments over time,” she says.

Born in Toronto and now living in New York, Kang is a prolific interdisciplinary artist who started experimenting with the “misuse” of photographic materials while still in art school. (She holds an MFA from New York’s Bard College) For her, photography is not just a tool to record images but a medium that provides opportunities to create other forms of art. In 2013, she strung out 50 sheets of photographic paper along a gallery wall, vulnerable to heat and light. In 2015, she soaked mesh rags in darkroom chemicals and then smeared them over paper to produce a monochromatic image. Working with photographic film is the latest iteration in her journey.

Soft, mutable and predominately flesh-colored in shades of red and orange, the skins are created through a process she calls “tanning,” whereby the sheets are purposely left in the sunlight for extended periods of time, often draped over a chair or laid across a table. Folds in the film result in streaks and are often peppered with interesting imperfections. My favorite, a bright yellow skin, picked up the imprint of raindrops, a result of being tanned in a leaky greenhouse. Kang is effectively making an image without a camera and with limited human intervention.

They have a life of their own, she says, referring to her creations as “bodies in perpetual becoming.”

As they get older, the chemistry breaks down and they turn yellow and then white.

“When they’re white, you could say they’re dead,” she says. “They’re exhausted.”

This reference to the body, either human or animal, is a constant throughout the exhibition.

“A lot of my installations function as a kind of entering a body or like a body unfurled,” she says, “like wearing your guts on the outside.”

Bold and dominant, the skins command attention and it’s easy to miss the smaller constructions, sand-cast aluminum sculptures of lotus roots, knotted kelp, and cabbage leaves strewn about the floor. The lotus root is a recurring reference to the artist's practice, both gastronomic and spiritual, but the vegetative sculptures serve a larger purpose: They reference the bodily processes of digestion and excretion and contribute to the life force that permeates the show.

It’s the life-sized baby rats made out of glass which viewers may find the most disturbing. Deliberately placed along fissures in the gallery wall as if emerging from the dark, pieces like Sticky Pup II highlight Kang’s message of interconnectivity.

“They function as an interruption forcing the viewer to start trying to put the parts together,” she says. “Rats are an in-between figure. They’re seen as both a parasite and akin to humans. My work itself is in-between states. It’s never fixed. Whether literally or metaphorically, it’s always in flux. In the same way the skins are taking on multiple spaces and environments in a way I describe as sticky, rats feel like another sticky species in terms of what it is to be alive, to be human. We’re connected to them. We’re stuck to them.” ■

Lotus L. Kang’s latest work, In Cascades, is on view at Vancouver’s Contemporary Art Gallery until Jan. 7.

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