Desire Pulsates in Candice Lin’s Demonic Factory

The high-ceilinged, light-filled loft space of Canal Projects in Chinatown appears to have been taken over by an external operation. An elevated structure stands in the centre, its lower level curtained off with large drawings. It is surrounded by six large workstations that fuse industrial design with elements from traditional medicine: talismanic ink drawings, tinctures attached to tubing, ceramic computers, a clock, machinery, scattered pens and stray post-it notes. In Candice Lin’s site-specific ‘Lithium Sex Demons in the Factory’, we piece together the story of an unnamed demon, awaking post-transformation, through crisply fluid animations playing on tablets, audio and printed segments pasted behind workstations.

Exemplified by characters such as Malay penanggal and Buddhist hungry ghosts, demonic return in Asian folklore is often determined by a lack of fulfilment in human life. Lin’s demon is a former factory worker who – having met a gruesome end attempting to steal thousands of dollars’ worth of batteries in the hope of securing a better life for them and their lover – now exists in a state of purgatory. The tragic nature of the demon’s story alongside the artist’s childlike depictions – in which they resemble an entity somewhere between a cow, a cat, a dog and a man – ultimately elicits empathy for the former factory worker, rather than revulsion at their transformation.

Lin was inspired by the writings of anthropologist Aihwa Ong, notably Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline (1987), which explores accounts of demonic possession among female Malay workers in a Japanese factory. Reported to experience fits of possession – screaming, falling on the shop floor, glossolalia – the company ultimately hired a bomoh, a Malay shaman and practitioner of traditional medicine, after Western methods of treatment such as Valium proved ineffective. In the exhibition, however, the plausibility of demonic possession pales in comparison to the harsh reality of the factory conditions: long shifts handling toxic materials overseen by aggressive managers and the absurdity of modern production, reducing the status of workers to the less-than-human. Lin suggests that death – and even demonic transformation – are not the ultimate tragedy for such labourers but, rather, being driven by necessity to work in the factory at all.

Ducking underneath the raised structure, which functions like a manager’s station, we enter a space illuminated by red light. Adapted to the artist’s own design are a series of onggi (Korean vessels used for fermentation) surrounded by sticks of burning incense, inviting us to participate in rituals to commune with or soothe the spirits of workers – although Lin’s installation suggests that no rite can truly redeem the horrors inflicted upon these workers.

Ascending the stairs, viewers enter the austere central structure of the manager’s station, with its corporate carpeting and awkwardly low ceiling. From the outside, it appears to operate like a brain, powering the surrounding workstations, while holes punched through the floor enable us to see inside the onggis – an adaptation of the same panoptical surveillance methods that were undoubtedly used to monitor the workers. The overwhelming sense of complicity makes you want to return to the demons of the factory floor. Could death and demonic possession actually signal freedom for the workers?, Lin seems to ask. The world of the possessed still pulsates with love and desire.

Candice Lin, ‘Lithium Sex Demons in the Factory’, is on view at Canal Projects, New York, until 16 December.

^{Main image: Candice Lin, Lithium Sex Demons in the Factory, 2023, animation still. Courtesy: the artist; François Ghebaly Gallery, New York and Los Angeles; and Canal Projects, New York}