Yanxiong Lin

Yanxiong Lin graduated with a BA in Product Design from the China Academy of Art. He went to Central Saint Martins for his MA in Design, where he graduated with distinction. 

 

His work sits in the permanent collection of the SHAANXI OPERA HOUSE AND XI'AN CONCERT HALL.

 

Lin's furniture and object designs, from his inaugural collection 'A Window to the Past' are somehow familiar in form, acknowledging the present, a nod to the past, but looking to the future and creating works of another dimension, time and civilisation. Working exclusively with wood, Washi paper and Urushi lacquer, Lin calls into question social and cultural dynamics through the forms, materials, and processes he has selected.

 

More specifically, the collection is a family of furniture that portrays a life cycle from birth to death through different furniture pieces. It lies in artist's experience of his grandmother raising him in a small village and his experience of this rich and happy childhood vanishing when his grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and the village she lived in was destroyed. Yanxiong's furniture traces this double loss and it is now being channelled into a creative and productive space. Every Chinese Lantern Festival, Yanxiong used to create paper lanterns with his grandmother, cementing papier-mâché as a symbolic material in his childhood memories.