3 River Lin

uch like therapy group sessions or religious confessions, performance artist River Lin creates situations that prompt participants to share their vulnerabilities. Couching his works in familiar, everyday conventions, he encourages (2014–), Lin dissects a gesture often exchanged between parent and child, probing the ubiquitous ritual and its significance by asking a roomful of audience members to point out a part of their body where physical or emotional pain has accumulated. Lin then pours a red, antiseptic merbromin solution into his mouth, and imprints his stained lips onto the traumatized areas, rendering the pain visible and generating a collective recognition of each other’s scars. The one-on-one encounter (2018), which appropriates the customs of bone setting—a traditional Chinese medicine technique—establishes a similarly intimate bond between a participant and the artist-healer, who diagnoses and addresses the former’s with a massage. Puncturing the boundaries between self and other is likewise at the core of (2016–), in which visitors choose a vial of water, labeled with a keyword related to Lin’s traumatic life experiences, that resonates with them. Lin then washes the hands of the participant over a basin with the selected liquid, before downing the receptacle’s contents as a symbolic act of purification.