Ou Lin is a Chinese visual artist based in London and Wenzhou who works primarily in Photography and Performance. She was graduate with a BA(Hons) in Photography from London College of Communication in 2020 and an MA Photography at the Royal College of Art in 2022.
While studying photography at the Royal College of Art, her work has focused strongly around an exploration of the maternal body, critiquing stereotypical ideas drawn from both eastern and western cultures.
Her present work offers a Feminist perspective of the gestating body from material and psychological angles. It presents a radical rethinking of the stereotypical versions of the happy, suffering and idealised pregnant woman as represented in art history and contemporary culture.
Ou is concerned with expanding the creative practice of maternity in relation to photography. She has created two series of experiential photographs of the gestating body that invite the viewer into an encounter with very matter of the pregnant body – the breath, the weight, the balance and ultimately the psychological tensions and dynamic physical forces at play.
The collaborative and interactive methods Ou employs with her models draws on ideas from older instructional photography and wider modes of performance. Most of her models are Chinese which shifts the socio-political context of sexual reproduction away from a presumed solely Western norm. The photographic studio becomes a laboratory for her to explore the visual iconography of pregnancy, and progress it from invisible to transgressive.
Ou’s work developed out of research with the female figure and stories of the sports in Western mythology. Her work takes exercise as its focus: it is very dynamic, the subjects looking powerful and they are attempting to hold a balance.
Ou is interested in the rich history of photography and how the still image can explore movement and a narrative journey by turning the gestating body into a body in an image. She links her work with Muybridge, a historical precedent for aspects of her work, which are to do with the narrative drive and an interest in a continuous dynamic process.
EDUCATION
2020 - 2022 | MA Photography. Royal College of Art.
2017 - 2020 | BA (Hons) Photography. London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.
AWARDS
2022 | New Photography Prize 2022, Winner
2022 | Global Design Graduate Show 2022, the Public Vote Winner
EXHIBITIONS
2022 | RCA Photography Graduates Present: AFTER THE WAITING ROOM, Copeland Gallery, London, UK
2022 | RCA 2022, The Royal College of Art, London, UK
2021 | WiP 2021, https://wip.rca.ac.uk, Virtual gallery space
2020 | UAL Graduate Showcase, https://graduateshowcase.arts.ac.uk, Virtual gallery space
2020 | Three Men Make a Tiger, www.threemenmakeatiger.co.uk, Virtual gallery space
2019 | Loading, The Art Academy, London, UK
2019 | Elective Affinities with PAN Intercultural Arts, The Photography Space, London, UK
BOOKS
2023 | Eye Mama: Poetic Truths of Home and Motherhood by Karni Arieli