Tielin Ding

tielinwork@gmail.com ︎


  1. Keys are Moving, They Generate Moving Keys 
  2. The Sound-truck of
  3. Site-specific Temporal Installation
  4. Grass, Mountain and Traffic Cone
  5. A Walk with Blaze 和树号的一次行走
  6. Meandering Markers of Murmurs
  7. A Walk with Traffic Stick
  8. Between /pɪŋ/ and /pɑŋ/
  9. An Apple Made of Foam and Cement
  10. A Man Holding a Stop Sign 
  11. The Sound-truck of
  12. Beyond the Surface 象外
  13. Portrait/Editorial 

Tielin Ding, born in 1996 in China,  is a wanderer, observer and mixed-media artist whose diverse practice involves working with playful objects, indeterminate traces and movements to create performative actions. His application of “Mapping” and “Walking” gives him more opportunity to reflect on invisible systems within urban and natural spaces.  Under the practice of way-finding, mark-making and game-changing, he has been very interested in drifting in the field of language and space, risking getting lost from point A to point B. He graduated from MFA in photography at Parsons School of Design, The New School in NYC.

Artist Statement

Artist CV︎ 



Mark




keys are moving, they generate moving keys.   2023  14x35inches
pigment print, oil pastel, scratches





John Cage asked in 1958 "when a truck is passing by a music school or a factory, which is more musical"?  I have been thinking about the moving truck signifying as a wandering heart, a risking mind and an international citizen who is always thinking of where to go and which direction to go.

A truck is a carrier, a vehicle of transportation and transformation, with the truck's aluminum surface reflecting sunrise, sunset, traffic lights and car lights while the wheels are always in motion. Along the journey, the truck keeps changing the color and light of its surface. 

In this solo presentation, the artist is sharing a site of construc(k)tion with photo-based installation including a design element of yellow, which is a color that has been penetrating through in his previous practices, suggesting a sense of both continuation and separation, just like the yellow line in the middle of the road.

The truck is on stage, under spotlight. The truck printed in body-scale is the first image you will see when you enter the gallery space. Next to the butt of the truck, there is a ‘TURNTABLE’ lying there in stillness. Floating above the yellow lines painted unevenly with latex paint, there is a white shirt insisting installing on the wall with yellow pushpins. It writes ‘EASTURN’ and ‘WESTURN’ on the back of the shirt paired with the image of sunset and sunrise.

In this presentation, I hope the works surrounding ‘The Truck’ also carry the energy/atmosphere of ‘The Truck’, every pigment/pixel of it. The surrounding works include a drawing titled as ‘wind-shield wiper inside the mind’ and a mixed-media work ‘keys are moving, they generate moving keys’, six other photographs including urbanscape with yellow traffic lights, spreading gravels and sand in the parking lot, a cone-shape cloud floating above an abandoned concrete mixer next to a blurrrry ferrrrry, trespassing coneflower and ‘trees, road-lights and water-fall’.

If to make a floating frame, I think I will give it to ‘The TURNTABLE’ which brings it more volume to activate/vibrate the surfaces mapped in this space, from the butt of ‘The Truck’. I looked up the word ‘TURNTABLE’ in the dictionary, it shows up as following:

a: a rotating platform that carries a phonograph record
b: a platform with a track for turning wheeled vehicles (such as locomotives)
C: LAZY SUSAN common in Chinese restaurant

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