'Incredibly poetic' works by Mel Chin address politics, justice in new MMOCA show

Take the giant spider, for example.

The artist Mel Chin created his colossal, eight-legged “Cabinet of Craving” from glass and lacquered white oak, and the vaulting arachnid dominates the entrance to the gallery.

Yet “The Cabinet of Craving” — one of many varied works in the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art exhibition: “Mel Chin: There’s Something Happening Here” — has more than one story to tell.

Like all of Chin’s work, it is filled with layers of meaning.

“The Cabinet of Craving” stems from the opium addiction of Chin’s grandfather, whose death was devastating to the family but was never to be spoken about. Inside the spider’s stomach, the delicate English porcelain teapot poised behind glass at an angle — as if set in a cabinet of curiosities about to collapse — alludes to the English imperialist thirst for tea and the illegal trade of narcotics that led to the Opium Wars.

“The Cabinet of Craving” was made in 2012, but 10 years later it is a reminder of America’s crushing epidemic of opioid addiction.

And so it is with many works in “There’s Something Happening Here.” Often they were pulled out of Chin’s personal archives, but they still resonate, sometimes eerily, today.

“You have these really — disheartening — kinds of coincidences,” Chin said.

The new show at MMOCA, running through July 31, presents Chin’s work in a broad range of media, from prints to sculpture, dioramas and installations.

“I think he’s is one of the most important contemporary artists living today,” curator of exhibitions Leah Kolb said.

“Not only does his work address social, political and environmental justice, the actual manifestation of his work is incredibly poetic and beautiful,” she said. “He pulls people in, I think, just through the aesthetics. And once you’re there, he presents you this whole backstory and meaning that is an incredibly thoughtful critique of politics, or calling attention to environmental disasters or human rights issues.”

So even before visitors encounter “The Cabinet of Craving,” those who climb up MMOCA’s translucent staircase from the lobby come face-to-face with a towering wall of sketches, framed in steel, from Chin’s graphic novella, “9-11/9-11.”

Chin created that work around the first anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, when nearly 3,000 people perished in the attacks on the World Trade Center. Chin was living in New York at the time, but he also wanted to draw the public’s attention to another tragic event on Sept. 11, 1973, when Chilean president Salvador Allende was ousted in a military coup with support from the U.S. Some 3,000 people were killed under the rule of the new president, Augusto Pinochet.

Chin said that learning of that 1973 event “changed my worldview.” His graphic novella evolved into an award-winning, hand-drawn, 24-minute animated film, also titled “9-11/9-11,” on view in MMOCA’s Imprint Gallery.

Chin’s work “is always so varied,” Kolb said. “He’s a conceptual artist, so the way he chooses his materials is based on what materials make the most sense, and express most effectively the ideas he’s trying to communicate.”

No easy classification

A lecture Chin did at MMOCA this month — which includes a good deal of humor and even some music — is online at www.mmoca.org/activities/talks-performances.

Born in Houston, Chin, 71, was awarded a MacArthur “genius” grant in 2019. The MacArthur Foundation noted that the artist has “a unique ability to engage people from diverse backgrounds and to utilize unexpected materials and places.”

Chin’s artwork “evades easy classification,” said Emily Arthur, associate professor of art at UW-Madison and a former student and friend of Chin’s.

From 1995-98 Arthur was part of Chin’s collective as a student at the University of Georgia, called GALA Committee, which even produced a conceptual, public art project on the TV show “Melrose Place.”

Chin also developed “Revival Field,” an ongoing project promoting “green remediation,” which uses plants to remove toxic heavy metals from the soil. And he is behind the “Fundred Project,” designed to change laws to protect children from lead contamination. At MMOCA, visitors of all ages are invited to design and color a “fundred-dollar bill” to add to the project.

Chin developed the “Fundred Project” after a post-Hurricane Katrina visit to New Orleans, where he learned about the lead issue there. He removed part of a house and turned it into a “Safehouse” artwork that traveled to MMOCA for the current show. However, when that structure was found to be too unsound for display, MMOCA teamed with city officials to find a house in Madison slated for demolition that Chin and his team could turn into a new “Safehouse” work.

From idea to actualization

“Mel Chin: There’s Something Happening Here” came about after Kolb learned from Arthur that the artist would be coming to Madison this spring to accept a lifetime achievement award from SGCI, an international group dedicated to printmaking.

SGCI held its 50th annual conference in Madison earlier this month, drawing hundreds of artists to the city from around the world.

To select works for the MMOCA show, Kolb and Arthur traveled to North Carolina, where Chin is now based. Chin pulled the title for the MMOCA show from the 1966 Buffalo Springfield song “For What It’s Worth.”

“I was thinking about Madison and its politics over the years,” Chin explained. “It’s good to tell people that we’re still thinking about these things. Something happened right here.”

Along with some show-stopper pieces, the exhibition at MMOCA includes many sketches and sources used by Chin to develop his work.

“One of the things I’ve realized through working at the museum for many years,” said Kolb, “is that audiences are always interested in not only the idea of the work, but how the artist came up with that idea, and what was the process that got him or her from idea to actualization.”

“Every decision that (Chin) makes along that process is so intentional and so thoughtful, because that’s how he operates,” she said. “Every decision is layered with meaning.”