Carolina QuotesI leave it up to the viewers. If it’s in a museum, if it’s in a gallery, usually I am going to point out something about a river right below your feet or right outside your window. I’m not going to scream it out. If you get a little curious, you can find a little bit more. At times my works are maybe to a fault subtle. For public works, maybe you won’t even notice I was here. I’m not trying to defeat or conquer nature.
Maya Lin Connected to the Carolinas
Source
"Maya Lin on Art, Architecture, Landscape and Memory" in Bloomberg (19 November 2022)
- year
- 2022
Cite this record
“I leave it up to the viewers. If it’s in a museum, if it’s i…” Maya Lin. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-479ACF78DF. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/479acf78df
More from Maya Lin
I think art is personal to each artist, and so to me it is what my art always has been about. But that’s my choice as an artist. I don’t believe art necessarily has to be any one thing. In fact, if we all felt inclined to have to do that, I think it would be a disaster for art.
Everything you make is being made by every single experience you've ever had in your whole life, and on top of that, things you were born with. I think your personality comes out. There's no way of really saying: "If A, then B, or A plus B equals C in creativity." The true strength of the creative arts is that you allow yourself to think about something. Then how it finds its way in your mind to the surface through your hands to-- whether it's paint or sculpture-- is intuited. I think there's reason to it. But could you extrapolate? Could you actually formulate a mathematical theorem? Absolutely not.
I had a simple impulse to cut into the earth. I imagine taking a knife and cutting into the earth, opening it up and the initial violence and pain that in time would heal. The grass would grow back, but the initial cut would remain a pure, flat surface in the earth with a polished mirrored surfaced, much like the surface on a geode when you cut it and polish the edge. The need for the names to be on the memorial would become the memorial. There was no need to embellish the design further. The people and their names would allow everyone to respond and remember. It would be an interface between our world and the quieter, darker, more peaceful world beyond.