SPOTLIGHT
CHOW AND LIN Artist Duo
Interview by Vanessa Jencks
Malaysian-born, Singapore-raised Stefen Chow and Singaporean Huiyi Lin are a Beijing-based duo exploring current life topics in visually relevant ways. They’ve won multiple awards, spoken at many events and participated in dozens of group and solo exhibits in over 18 countries. In all fairness, the recent worldwide success and acknowledgement of their ambitious project The Poverty Line really comes as no surprise. For readers not familiar with The Poverty Line, could you give me a brief summary about it? Lin: Firstly, it’s an interdisciplinary project cross studying in photography and art, then into public policy and economic research. Secondly, it’s not something for one specific type of audience. Thirdly, it takes a global-local lens. We are taking a lens to look at global issues yet contextualizing the local situation. We start from things that we associate with very directly, which is food and newspapers. Chow: The whole idea was just to answer the question, what does it mean to be poor? This issue struck with us quite personally. After we started this project, we realized that both of us were born into privileged backgrounds, but then both of our families actually lost everything in their respective businesses when we were young. So we actually experienced life with financial struggles as we were growing up. We were very fortunate to have proper education and also to move up the social ladder, so to speak. As we became professionals ourselves, we wanted to find projects that were meaningful. This topic actually really resonated with us. How did you pick the food that actually went on to the newspaper? Lin: Generally the approach that we took was that we wanted to assemble a local
“I realized the photography professor was actually living at the poverty line herself” food basket. From an economic approach, you want to look at the local food choices, comprising of different types of food groups, carbohydrates, proteins, fruits, vegetables and snacks. If one day someone gets a little more money, they might not just spend it on basic calories but perhaps better protein or a treat for their children. We try to recreate rational and impulsive consumer behaviors. Do you have any specific stories that stand out to you while you were researching for this project? Chow: I have two personal stories. One was about Arjun, the caretaker in the apartment that we were staying in India. After he realized what we were doing, he personally guided us to the local markets to get food at local prices and brought the food back for us. I told him we also photographed this project in different countries. He immediately asked, “Have you done Switzerland?” It just popped up from nowhere. “Yeah, I think we have photographs,” I told him. His next question was, “Are there poor people in Switzerland?” And we say, “Interesting that you asked, there are.” So we showed him the poverty line choices in Switzerland. He found it very fascinating. He was looking at the food, comparing with what he has back home. And we know Arjun does not get high pay, but has a very modest salary and livelihood. He remarked to us that he actually has more choices than what they did in Switzerland. The reason why he had an impression about Switzerland was that
in India, in a lot of Bollywood movies, the stars will often dance and suddenly land in the hills of Switzerland. So for a lot of mainstream Indians, Switzerland represents this paradise, a heaven for anyone who visits the country. The other story was from when I was traveling in Portland, in the US, and met up with a photography professor. As we were having lunch, she started asking me about the statistics and the figures about the poverty line in the US, which we have documented as well. I started sharing figures with her about the food budget. Then she remarked, “Yeah, that’s about how much I spend in a single day.” I realized the photography professor was actually living at the poverty line herself. She explained that she is not a full-time professor at the state university. Her other sources of income had dried up. Her car was behind payments. The house was under threat of being repossessed. I think this is the biggest learning point we have in doing ten years worth of poverty line work. We’re not just talking about a community of people that we see to be very visibly poor. They may have a job, they may have education, but due to circumstances, either through individual choices or systematic choices, they have slipped through the cracks and have fallen below the poverty line. The people that we are documenting are actually the people who look more like everyone else, our core audience, rather than someone that we assume to be poor, just because they look like it.
DECEMBER 2021 | 15
