Lin May Saeed, a Berlin-based artist whose work was included in major exhibitions including the Berlin Biennial and in Castello di Rivoli in Turin, passed away on Wednesday, her Los Angeles gallery Chris Sharp confirmed. ‘One of the most radical and uncompromising sculptors of her generation,’ the gallery described her, ‘Lin was also passionately committed to the cause of animal rights and the harmonious coexistence of human beings and animals.’
Saeed’s work took its subject from the artist’s political conviction, her activism for animal rights and for equality. It told stories of the history of human-animal relationships, spanning from prehistoric times to the present day, as in her first institutional exhibition, Biene, at Studio Voltaire in London in 2018. Saeed believed we humans had a lot to learn from animals, and told writer Osman Can Yerebakan in an interview for BOMB Magazine that her ‘favourite daydream’ is imagining aliens and animals coming together to meet humans to give them a ‘masterclass’ called ‘How Not To Mess It Up’.
Born in 1973 in Würzburg, Germany to an Iraqi father, Saeed included Arabic in her artworks and published a small books with recipes from Iraq in conjuction with an exhibition at Bonner Kunstverein in 2012. A solo exhibition, Lin May Saeed. The Snow Falls Slowly in Paradise, in which she also responds to the work of German sculptor Renée Sintenis will open at the Georg Kolbe Museum in Berlin on 14 September.
