Walking the Poverty Line with Lin Huiyi : Insights from 10 years of Art with Purpose
The word “poverty” is commonly understood. But it looks different in different places and at different times. There are quantitative definitions of the “poverty line”. Yet our experience of quality of life and our measures of progress are based on much more than financial metrics. Poverty and inequality in society have direct impacts on our businesses, communities, and hope for the future.
To document the shifting landscape of the poor across time and space, Alumna Lin Huiyi created The Poverty Line, an art project that uses the universal lens of food to examine the daily choices we would face living at the poverty line.
Over a period of 10 years, she and her partner traveled across 36 countries and territories to document the food that can be bought at the official poverty line from local marketplaces, photographed against the backdrop of local newspapers. The Poverty Line is a growing conversation that questions our understanding of poverty and inequality. Traversing cultures and economic systems, it confronts the viewer with objective, non-emotional observations of our own circumstance, framed against the fragile balance of social structures, growth, and divide in an entangled, globalized world.
Together with GIFT Managing Director, Eric Stryson, the conversation will explore the project’s purpose, conceptual framing and what the artists learned about culture, shared humanity and what the future may hold.
