Lilian Lijn studied archaeology and art history in Paris where she taught herself to draw, and where her first exhibition was held at La Librairie Anglaise in 1963. Three years later Lijn moved to London. She began to experiment with light and movement, and materials including plastics, acid and fire, and became associated with the Kinetic art movement (she was included in the 1993 Barbican exhibition The Sixties Art Scene in London along with Bridget Riley). Lijn's earliest moving mechanisms, Vibographie Poem Machines (1962-8), are cylinders or cones covered with excerpts from poems. As they rotate the words seem to make patterns, are read out of sequence, and form new relationships in the mind of the viewer.
Tate also houses Lijn's Liquid Reflections {1967-8), which is a 'multiple'. Two perspex balls move randomly on a revolving disc containing a mixture of oil and water. The light playing on the piece and its steady movement are gently hypnotic. Making multiples was part of the project to bring art cheaply to large audiences through mass production that united a number of artists at this time, among them Lijn's then husband, Takis, and Mary Martin. All three took part in the Unlimited Multiples group in 1969. Lijn wrote in the catalogue: 'When a sculpture is made in a factory and does not depend on the touch of the artist for its magic, there is no reason why it should not be produced in unlimited quantities. The only reason for a limited production is a commercial one: scarcity makes precious.'
During the 1980s Lijn's work became explicitly feminist. She combined her industrial materials with 'feminine' materials and methods, such as beads and weaving. She made sculptures of goddesses, and pieces wearable as headdresses, which were shown at the Venice Biennale in 1986. Lijn sees these as linked to her earlier work in that they attempt to infuse our technological world with a feminine poetic symbolism. Her essay 'Imagine the Goddess! A rebirth of the female archetype in sculpture' was published in the journal Leonardo (1987), and in her autobiography Crossing Map (London 1983} she wrote; 'The artist, at all times an outsider, is as a woman an outsider even among artists.' |
