Dubbed the “vine that ate the South,” the infamous kudzu plant has a reputation. The fast-multiplying, invasive arrowroot was brought to North America in the 19th century and promoted to ease erosion, although the hot, muggy climate of the Southern U.S. proved too accommodating. For decades, kudzu has spread at a rapid speed, swallowing up roadsides, infrastructure, and really anything in its path. Its seemingly insatiable growth has vaulted the perennial plant to mythic status in Southern ecology, conservation, and culture.
As a child in Birmingham, Joyce Lin was accustomed to the vine, although as an adult, she’s found that it’s difficult to disentangle kudzu’s reputation and tangible influence. “It is loathed for shading out the native flora, but its impact is often overstated,” she says. “While it visibly thrives along roadsides where there is a lot of sun, kudzu is unable to penetrate deeply into forests.”
This complicated legacy inspired a body of work that melds vernacular furniture with the plant. Kudzu Series comprises four sculptures that wouldn’t be out of place on an abandoned Southern farm. A found metal floorlamp cracks in two, wrapping the leafy plant around a bulb like a lopsided shade. The vines also climb up a wooden ladder, their sinuous roots mimicking the steps of the lower rungs.
Lin is interested in the relationship between reality and fantasy, particularly as she transforms synthetic materials into uncanny knotted bark and concentric growth rings in the shape of a chair. Kudzu Series is no different. While she foraged the thick vines from areas near her home in Houston, the artificial leaves emerged from a laborious process.
Citing the techniques of Michael Anderson, who made models for Yale’s Peabody Museum before retiring, Lin made plaster and silicone press molds. “My method uses wires sandwiched between dyed shop towels and tissue paper soaked in five-minute epoxy. I painstakingly painted in the veins and details on each leaf. Imperfections of the casts ultimately turned into brown spots and bug holes,” she says. Creating seamless transitions from wood to vine with epoxy clay and utilizing inner armatures adds to the surreal qualities of the works, as the plant appears to sprout directly from the industrial material. Torching, vinegar, and steel wool weathered areas that were too pristine.
Perched on a few leaves are a handful of kudzu bugs, rotund insects that arrived in the U.S. in the aughts and have decimated the vines. “The chair has approximately 332 leaves and one bug, the table has 101 leaves and three bugs, the floor lamp has 162 leaves and two bugs, and the ladder has 117 leaves and one bug, which in total took me a little over a year to make,” the artist says.
For Lin, this body of work is a sort of metaphor for persistence and resilience. She adds:
It arrived as an outsider, yet it has become an icon of the South, appearing in art, music, and literature. It outcompetes species, yet its flexibility and resilience make it uniquely suited to survive a changing climate. Its roots are edible, its vines are weavable, its fibers can be used to make cloth and paper, and it has been used in East Asian medicine for centuries.
Lin is currently teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design and will spend the summer in Philadelphia for the Windgate Arts Residency Program. Follow her work on Instagram.
