Artist & sculptural furniture designer Joyce Lin embraces material experimentation as a core element of art making. She creates work that explores the connections between outer surfaces and the interior, considering the impact of human intervention on our physical surroundings.

Artist & sculptural furniture designer Joyce Lin embraces material experimentation as a core element of art making. She creates work that explores the connections between outer surfaces and the interior, considering the impact of human intervention on our physical surroundings. Lin’s conceptually and aesthetically intricate works bridge the realm of functional design and fine art sculpture.

Lin aims to capture the humor and anxiety related to the ongoing erosion of boundaries between our natural and artificial worlds through sculptural furniture pieces. Her unexpected and singular approach is best understood through the 1-800- Get Pink chair (2020). This piece exposes the chair’s foam layers through organically shaped cutouts that suggest the chair is shedding its outer skin. The work embodies Lin’s interest in examining how things are made, where they come from, and how separate parts interact to make a functional whole.

Joyce Lin grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, where she attended the Alabama School of Fine Arts and first began creating kinetic sculptures. Her cross-disciplinary interests led her to attend the Brown-RISD Dual Degree Program, where she earned bachelor’s degrees in Furniture Design at the Rhode Island School of Design and Geology-Biology at Brown University in 2017. Today, Lin is based in Houston, where she teaches at TXRX Labs and produces new work at the East End Maker Hub.

Material Autopsy

In recent years, Lin has come to be recognised for creating works that explore the connections between outer surfaces and interior structures through pieces such as Egg Chair(2019) and Skinned Table(2020). With her exhibition, titled Material Autopsy, Lin is continuing these explorations while delving more broadly and deeply into the range and impact of human intervention in our physical surroundings. Her distinct practice captures the humour and anxiety related to the ongoing erosion of boundaries between the natural and artificial. It embraces material experimentation as core to the art of making.