Videos : Asian Export

PEM's FreePort [No. 005] team paints Michael Lin's vivid armorial silhouettes on the Mellon Staircase and Galleries. This time-lapse video captures the complex five-week process in more than 1,500 photographs!

In an interview recorded at PEM in 2010, Michael Lin discusses his practice of appropriating floral patterns to create large-scale, public artworks that challenge the conventions of exhibition.

In Michael Lin's FreePort project, PEM's renowned collection of Asian export art is in conversation with Lin's vision of a not-too-distant reality, where the ancient art of export porcelain is seen anew as the crafting of "mass-produced, everyday objects."

PEM staff documented how this monumental 12-panel room screen was moved and photographed to make high-resolution images available to scholars worldwide. The screen was made in the 1730s for John Eccleston, a silk merchant and director of the British East India Company. See it for yourself in the Asian Export Art: China Gallery, Level 2.