Lin Yan: Everlasting Layers

Alisan Atelier is pleased to present Lin Yan: Everlasting Layers, a landmark exhibition by the internationally acclaimed Chinese artist – her first comprehensive solo show in Hong Kong – as a centerpiece of the French May Arts Festival 2025. Spanning two decades of Lin Yan’s career, the exhibition traces her evolution from early 2000s experiments to site-specific installations as recent as this year, redefining the poetic potential of paper through the melding of Chinese tradition and global contemporary practice.

Born in Beijing into a storied artistic lineage (her grandfather was modernist pioneer Pang Xunqin 1906-1958; her mother, abstract painter Pang Dao 1934-2025), Lin Yan’s practice is rooted in the rich heritage of Chinese ink on paper yet enriched by her global journey. After formative studies at L’École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, she spent over two decades in New York, where she exhibited widely and refined her cross-cultural vision. This trilateral influence—Beijing’s legacy, Parisian formal rigour, and New York’s avant-garde energy—fuels her transformation of Xuan paper into intricate and impactful installations. Layering pleated sheets, ink, plaster, and urban detritus, Lin conjures meditations on memory, decay, and renewal. Her work, as noted in a 2023 CAFA (Central Academy of Fine Arts, Bejing) Art Museum retrospective, “transcends geography, turning fragile material into a universal language of impermanence.”

Two Decades of Layering Experiences

Curated as a career survey, Everlasting Layers unveils Lin Yan’s pioneering dialogue with paper. Responding to the demolition of Beijing’s historic buildings after her return in 1994, Lin began casting surfaces of old architecture in Xuan paper, preserving vanishing elements like roof tiles and rivets. Originally trained as an oil painter, she shifted to Xuan paper as her primary medium by 2005, creating sculptural works that meditate on tranquility through soft, crumbled layers. Her practice negotiates contrasts—black ink and white paper, hard and soft textures, darkness and light—as seen in early pieces such as those from her 2008 solo exhibition at China Square New York, Remaking. Since the 2010s, Lin has expanded into site-specific installations, responding to architectural spaces with works like Embracing Stillness (2013) at New York’s Flatiron Prow Art Space, Sky (2013) at Beijing’s Yuan Art Museum, Beyond Xuan Paper (2014) at Brussels’ The Associazione Culturale Officina and Sky 2 (2017) at Sydney’s White Rabbit Gallery. Through layered imagery and lyrical forms, her works invite viewers to contemplate ecological impermanence and inner tranquility—a meditation on humanity’s fragile yet enduring bond with the natural world.

Site-Specific Dialogues

For this exhibition, Lin Yan has conceived immersive installations that interact dynamically with Alisan Atelier’s architecture and surroundings. Suspended paper sculptures, some stained with ink or entangled with cotton threads, evoke ancient scrolls reimagined for the Anthropocene. Her site-specific installations, spanning cities worldwide, confront global warming and environmental fragility while evoking the interconnectedness of nature, humanity, and the cosmos. By embedding fragments of urban rubble or casting shadows through crumpled layers, Lin invites viewers to contemplate transience and renewal. “Lin’s work is a conversation between material and void,” notes Daphne King, Global Director of Alisan Fine Arts. “She transforms Xuan paper—a symbol of China’s artistic heritage—into a living medium that breathes with the space it inhabits.”

3pm-4:30pm, Saturday, 12 July, 2025
FILM SCREENING & FIRESIDE CHAT

Unsung Heroes of Ink
In conjunction with the French May Arts Festival Associated Exhibition Lin Yan: Everlasting Layers
Speakers

Olivia Wang, Film Director
Alan Yeung, Associate Curator, Ink Art, M+
Alisan Atelier

1904 Hing Wai Centre, 7 Tin Wan Praya Road, Aberdeen, Hong Kong
Kindly RSVP [email protected]
Live-streamed on Instagram at 3:30PM

On the occasion of Lin Yan’s first major solo exhibition in Hong Kong, which highlights the expressive quality of paper at the heart of her practice, Alisan Atelier is pleased to present the screening of Unsung Heroes of Ink. This 25-minute documentary focuses on the role of paper and paper-making in Chinese ink art. The screening will be followed by a conversation with the documentary director and producer, Olivia Wang, and Alan Yeung, Associate Curator of Ink Art at M+ Hong Kong.

About the Film Director
Olivia Wang is an independent art curator, consultant and writer with a focus in contemporary ink art. Her writing on contemporary Chinese art has been published in the Wall Street Journal, Art AsiaPacific, Orientations, Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, among others. Olivia holds a BA from Brown University and MPhil from Oxford University. Wang previously was representative of the Ink Society, Hong Kong and is currently an adjunct curator at the National Gallery Singapore.
About Alan Yeung
Alan Yeung is Associate Curator, Ink Art, at M+, Hong Kong. He is also co-curator, with Tina Pang, of the newly opened exhibition Canton Modern: Art and Visual Culture, 1900s-1970s and curator of Yang Jiechang: Chine demain pour hier. Previously, he was Fellow at CAMLab, a new initiative at Harvard University that combines humanistic inquiry with creative digital media practice, and Associate Curator at the Beijing gallery Ink Studio. Alan is co-editor, with Valerie Doran and Eugene Wang, of The Liu Kuo-Sung Reader: Selected Texts on and by the Artist, 1950s–Present (2024).