The idea for g/hosti – a towering painted cardboard labyrinth set within a circular room – first came to the artist Candice Lin in a dream. In it, she imagined cats, wolves, dogs and foxes playing out a mischievous, childlike narrative. Interwoven were darker images: human cadavers and dancing skeletons, emerging from the painted scenery. Realising the dream for a new commission at Whitechapel Gallery in London, she added phone screens displaying animations and fragments of news footage of recent atrocities and natural disasters. She explains, ‘I have been wondering, as many others have, why images like these no longer move us to action in the ways they may have in the past?’ For Lin, the labyrinth stands for a sense of estrangement and disorientation that permeates contemporary experience. This publication charts the development of this extraordinary artwork, and features a startling short story by novelist Lucy Ives, a fairy-talelike text by Lin and a conversation between the two. An introduction from the exhibition curators connects g/hosti to Lin’s broader practice.
