LIN RAN
FURTIVELY ART MUSEUM
CURATED BY WANG CHUNCHEN
The idea of the Furtive Art Museum began to take shape when Lin Ran observed that a homeless man had lived on a bench in the garden in front of her apartment building for almost three years. She noticed that the downtown area was full of empty houses and apartments. People wander about homeless while the vacancy rates for urban housing is alarmingly high. She began to pay attention to the series of social issues caused by empty apartments.
After considerable fieldwork, thought and curatorial preparation, Lin Ran founded the Furtive Art Museum in September 2018. The museum is a moving art space, focusing on the transformation of vacant space into art space. Moving from one vacant space to an other, exhibitions can about crop up anywhere, just like wild flowers manage to bloom at any corner of a vacant urban building complex.
Through a series of impromptu and unconventional actions, the museum gives temporary functions to these everyday vacant spaces in a way that is subtle and ineffable, exploring the relations between forms of art, the dimensions of ideas and the context beyond. The museum tries to intervene in two realities: the occupation and the vacancy issues of urban residential spaces in the past decades, and crafty and teasing approaches of gaining living spaces in the local community.
Lin Ran, What can we do with a vacant apartment in the city? 7, 2019, Acid-free paper micro spray. Courtesy of the artist.
Lin Ran, What can we do with a vacant apartment in the city? 3, 2019, Acid-free paper micro spray. Courtesy of the artist