My parents are both college professors, and it made me want to question authority, standards and traditions.
Maya LinRead
I try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That's art to me.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Art is about offering new perspectives on the world.
In this quote, Maya Lin emphasizes that the essence of art lies in its ability to challenge and expand the way individuals perceive their environment. By presenting alternative viewpoints, art encourages deeper reflection and appreciation of the world around us, transforming ordinary sights into profound experiences.
Themes
ArtPerspectivesSurroundingsCreativityExpression
In practice
Example use cases
In a gallery opening where the artist discusses their work.
More from Maya Lin
All quotes →How we are using up our home, how we are living and polluting the planet is frightening. It was evident when I was a child. It's more evident now.
Maya LinRead
Sometimes you have to stop thinking. Sometimes you shut down completely. I think that's true in any creative field.
Maya LinRead
A lot of my works deal with a passage, which is about time. I don't see anything that I do as a static object in space. It has to exist as a journey in time.
Maya LinRead
When I was building the Vietnam Memorial, I never once asked the veterans what it was like in the war, because from my point of view, you don't pry into other people's business.
Maya LinRead
I though about what death is, what a loss is. A sharp pain that lessens with time, but can never quite heal over. A scar. The idea occurred to me there on the site. Take a knife and cut open the earth, and with time the grass would heal it. As if you cut open the rock and polished it.
Maya LinRead
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I find that’s one of the great things about acting-you have the opportunity to stand in somebody else’s shoes. Each character faces a dilemma in her life, and as an actor you’re able to step into that character’s skin, look through her eyes. You leave transformed, a different person, because once you live a little bit of someone’s life, it changes you.
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The urge to make art or contemplate philosophy does not go away when you are sick. Those urges just become transfigured by illness.
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Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it.
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