Biography
Lili Chin is an artist based in New York City. Combining installation, video and sculpture, her practice focuses on nature and architecture to explore rituals in time, bridging contemporary and ancient ideas that investigate themes of memory, duration and spirituality. Having grown up in the Pacific Northwest USA and Singapore, her diverse background shapes her ephemeral impression of the world through raw materials and film to reveal a fragile search for the quotidian sublime.
Selected international exhibitions venues featuring her installations, sculpture and artwork include the Drawing Center, Island Gallery, Below Grand, NYC, He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen, Collar Works, NY, STPI Print Center, Singapore, and various other venues in Beijing, Shanghai, Mexico City, Ecuador and the Orkney Islands. Her films have screened at various international venues, including Anthology Film Archives, 601 Art Space, Microscope Gallery, Millenium, Oxford Digital Festival, Edinburgh Film Festival, NY Underground Film Festival and more.
She has attended numerous residencies, including MacDowell, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Swatch Art Peace Hotel, The Studios at Mass MoCA, the Galveston Artist Residency, Hospitalfield, Arborath, Cove Park, Argyll and Bute, Scotland, and Akiyoshidai International Art Village, Japan. Forthcoming residencies include Wave Hill, Bronx and the Tides Institute, Maine. She holds an MFA from the University of California, San Diego and a BFA from Pratt Institute.
Artist Statement
My art practice originates with collections of fragile and historic objects shaped by a desire to salvage and reconstruct significance from vanishing sites and systems. I distill meaning from ancient rituals, nomadism and personal memory, gleaning objects and media to carve out fresh relationships with disappearing traditions. My process is conceptual and intuitive, diversely incorporating film, drawing, sculpture and installation. My objects and films become activated in an intuitive arrangement of chance situations as I experiment with invented artifacts and organic matter to yield unpredictable encounters. My work initiates a fluid dialogue with unseen energies to evoke psychological, sensual and social perceptions inspired by nature.