Jia-Jen Lin is a Taiwanese-American artist based in Brooklyn. Her installations mediate the body, space, human condition, and our society. Trained traditionally as a painter and holding a BFA from the National Taiwan Normal University, Lin received her MFA in Sculpture, Installation, and Multimedia from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in Boston. As the daughter of a former bounded-leather manufacturer in Taichung, Taiwan, and an artist herself, Lin understands and promotes the importance that different social roles play in our society. Lin’s interest developed around transforming experience through modifying materials and objects into three-dimensional presentations. Since 2007, she has created a body of work that integrates sculpture, photography, video, text, and performance.
From 2011 to 2013, Lin founded and oversaw the DBS Collective to foster the exchange of ideas and collaborations among artists working in different genres in Taiwan and abroad. From 2012 to 2017, she cared for her husband after his diagnosis with terminal cancer and bore the long-term trauma of his sudden death. In addition to the effort to bridge art and the working class, she has greatly concentrated her concerns and creations on the human experience.
Among other places, her works have been shown in the Queens Museum in New York, Franconia Sculpture Park in Minnesota, Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale in South Korea, the Watermill Center in New York, Hangar in Barcelona, gr_und in Berlin, and the Rubber Factory in New York. She was selected as artist in residence at the International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Nebraska, the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts in Australia, L’Estruch in Spain, and Sculpture Space in New York. Lin has received grants from the Jerome Foundation, the Brooklyn Arts Council, the Taiwan Ministry of Culture, and the National Culture and Arts Foundation in Taiwan. She has been awarded the Brooklyn Arts Fund for 2021 and will attend artist residencies at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin and the Arctic Circle, supported by the Traveling Fellowship from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in Boston and a cultural exchange grant from the National Culture and Arts Foundation in Taiwan.