Hai-Wen Lin is a Chicago-based Taiwanese-American artist from northern California whose work draws from postminimalism and explores constructions of the body and its surrounding environment. Their artwork has been exhibited at the Pittsburgh Glass Center, San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art, and the Mosesian Center for the Arts. Their print-based works have sold at various art book fairs, zinefests, and have received recognition from the New England Book Builders, AIGA, and Design Observer. Lin is a recipient of the New Artist Society Scholarship and the Ox-Bow Fellowship. They received a B.A. from the University of California, Davis in Design and Psychology and are currently a Master of Design Candidate in Fashion, Body and Garment at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
pour bright winds, exit a lake, 2022, 17" × 38.5", steel, acrylic, water, clear skies, light
green exhale, strike the rock, 2022, 24" × 24", cement, pigment, acrylic, grass, bugs, sky
a 30 minute walk on a Sunday morning through Wicker Park, 2022, 81" × 60" × 9.75", cyanotype on silk, bamboo, thread, copper, sunlight, wind
untitled (death kite), 2022, 65" × 79.5" × 30", silk, reed, bamboo, thread, steel, cement, copper leaf, acrylic, vinyl, wood, faux fur
untitled (death kite), 2022, 65" × 79.5" × 30", silk, reed, bamboo, thread, steel, cement, copper leaf, acrylic, vinyl, wood, faux fur
Follow the Pheasant, 2022, 84" × 23" × 23", steel, cement
Tuning; west wind; 2.1–2.6 (performance still), 2022, Duration: 13 minutes, 35 seconds, solo performance
excerpt of Lieh-Tzu, 2022, 4.5" × 8.5", laser print
from a translation of Lieh-Tzu by Eva Wong
My practice engages with the construction of diasporic identity and the body through objects and systems of measurement as they pertain to gender, culture, and behavior. My work is situated at the intersections of art, craft, and design, fluidly moving through garments, photographs, performance, sound, and printed ephemera. Queerness is frequently employed both as a method of unsettling traditional culture into new forms as well as a lens of examining how bodies become misaligned with the systems that govern our lives. Kites, wooden frames, and sculptures derived from patternmaking techniques become metaphors for my body’s attempts to exist freely in tandem with the world around it. Daoist principles of ziran (自然), or “the natural state of things”, and wuwei (無為), or “action without action” act as guiding philosophies for my work where I often seek to collaborate with the natural environment to guide my hand in effortless creation: the sun draws my images and the wind shapes my forms. This body of work celebrates the everyday and the act of living as an art form.