Lins Morgan

Degree Completed

BFA in Studio Art

Artist Statement

I am a multi-discipline sculptor who works primarily with ceramic, wood, and wire. I also create through video projection, drawing, and painting. The underlying theme in my art is human connection, often looking at the ways connection breaks down and the effects of that disintegration. While there is the surface level of exploring connections between people, I’m also interested in the way that people connect (and don’t connect) to the environment and to their past experiences. Literature, Catholicism, and dance are the key elements that inspire my work.

I first became interested in concerns surrounding GMO manufacturing while taking a botany course. While GMO foods appear similar to their non-GMO counterparts, genetically they have been radically altered. Ethical concerns surround the industry and its scientific practices.

In The Thing is Not the Thing Anymore, wooden framing, hands, and wire combine to become a single monstrous entity. Gold framing and silver wire are used to indicate the idolatrous deification of science without conscience. The hands indicate the way humans are playing god in their manipulations of the natural world. Scientists have forced connections between plants of differing species, bacteria, and tumor causing viruses. The substances would never occur naturally. While looking identical, GMOs contain only partial DNA of the original organism. The antique table references the historical context of food from which we have so drastically departed. The foods we eat today are not the same foods our ancestors consumed. To show these complex connections, wires dance in and out of the food items and through mankind’s hands. The wires emulate the twisted deductions which are being presented as fact by GMO manufacturers, all while hiding the complicated man-made nature of GMO substances.

Lins Morgan, The Thing is Not the Thing Anymore, 2020, Wood, wire, plaster, thrown bowls, antique serving table, glass test tubes, angle irons, cutting board and knife, apples, canola oil, corn, potatoes, rice, squash, sugar, and tomatoes, 78 x 76 x 26 inches