Mountain Call: Hai-Wen Lin & Ivan David Ng

Mountain Call is an exhibition of new works by Hai-Wen Lin and Ivan David Ng. Both artists are Hakka, a group of people who dispersed from the central plains of China a thousand years ago. Due to their constant migrations, they were referred to as “Guest Families.” Over many generations of movement and displacement, the two artists now find themselves in different parts of the American Midwest: Hai-Wen in Chicago, Ivan in Columbus.

Made collaboratively across distance, the show draws on the improvisational practice of “Shan Ge” (lit. mountain song) used by Hakka laborers and farmers to communicate with each other across large distances while cultivating crops on cliffs and hills, as songs were easier to understand than spoken language. As a conceptual framework, the pieces in the exhibition pull references from Hakka bayin music, early radio experiments, and the Mogao caves to speculatively explore the transmission of information and knowledge, across time and space.

Hai-Wen Lin is an artist currently living under the Chicago sky. Their work explores constructions of the body, the attunement of oneself to the environment, and conversations with time. Lin received a MDes in Fashion, Body and Garment from the SAIC.

Ivan David Ng is a Singaporean artist presently based in the US. His practice draws speculatively from the contested origins of the Hakka “guest people”, reflecting on what it means to be human, wedged between land and sky. He earned his MFA in Drawing and Painting from The Ohio State University with research at the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts & Design.

Hai-Wen and Ivan met as residents at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in the summer of 2023.