Lin Yan

Everlasting Layers in Hong Kong

Presented as part of Le French May 2025, Lin Yan: Everlasting Layers marked the Beijing-born artist’s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong. The show brought together works from the past two decades alongside new pieces, offering a concise look at her use of paper, ink, memory, and sculptural form. Lin Yan is best known for working with Xuan paper, a handmade Chinese paper traditionally used for calligraphy and ink painting. In her practice, the paper is not just a surface. She folds, layers, casts, and shapes it with ink and plaster, turning it into three-dimensional works that carry traces of architecture, personal history, and cultural change. Many works in the exhibition are based on everyday objects and remembered spaces, including roof tiles, wooden boards, and a wheel from her father’s wheelchair. These references give the work a quiet emotional weight, linking fragile materials with themes of care, time, and resilience. The exhibition also showed how Lin Yan’s practice has developed over time. After beginning as an oil painter, she expanded into Chinese ink, wax, wire, plaster, dried flowers, and large-scale paper installation. Her work now sits between traditional Chinese ink culture and contemporary sculpture. A highlight of the show was a site-specific piece from her Regeneration of Hope series, inspired by the Big Dipper. Made with string and layered paper, the work connected memory, mapping, and the night sky. Shaped by memories of old Beijing, time spent in New York, and concern for disappearing historic places, Lin Yan’s art often explores balance: softness and structure, damage and repair, fragility and strength. Lin Yan: Everlasting Layers offered a thoughtful introduction to an artist who uses a traditional material in deeply contemporary ways. Through Xuan paper, ink, and sculptural form, the exhibition reflected on memory, transformation, and the lasting connection between past and present. Alisan Atelier: 1904 Hing Wai Centre, 7 Tin Wan Praya…