MEL CHIN
9-11/9-11, Chile/U.S.A., 2006
Film Screenings
NYC / Santiago / Houston
October 2006

In this animated new film, 9-11/9-11, Mel Chin creates a tale of two cities, a tragedy of two times, weaving a story of love and hope wrecked by overt and covert manipulations of power and the impact of these collective traumas. 9-11/9-11 is presented by Creative Time and will be shown in October in Santiago, Chile (Centro Cultural Palacio La Moneda, Santiago), New York City, and Houston (The Museum of Fine Arts).

September 11, 2001—New York City. September 11, 1973—Santiago. The terrorist attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York scarred the trust of the American people; while the Chilean military overthrow of President Salvador Allende, which occurred on the same day twenty-eight years prior, ushered in seventeen years of autocratic rule that left countless victims of torture and more than three thousand dead.

Thanks to Ann W. Harithas for her generous support for 9-11/9-11.

MEL CHIN is an artist who generates social awareness and responsibility through his politically engaged work. Chin's work takes on many forms, from conceptual installation to collaborative partnership and from practical environmental and social projects to popular entertainment.  Chin has shown nationally and internationally including one-person exhibitions at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Menil Collection, Houston; Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York; and the Fabric Workshop, Philadelphia. Chin's projects and public commissions have been installed at diverse sites such as Central Park, New York; Pig's Eye Landfill, St. Paul; Floriadepark, Netherlands; Eco Tec International, Corsica; and Three Rivers Arts Festival, Pittsburgh. His work has also been shown in the Havana Biennale; Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona; K-21 Museum, Dusseldorf; Kwangju Biennale, Korea; Smithsonian Museum, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. He was selected to participate in Art 21: Art in the 21st Century, a PBS series which was broadcast nationally in September 2001. Chin was the recipient of the Cal Arts Herb Alpert Award in the Visual Arts, a Rockefeller Grant, a Creative Capital Grant, and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, among others. Chin received a BA from Peabody College in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1975.