Candice Lin

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Candice Lin (born 1979) is an American interdisciplinary artist who makes installations, sculptures, drawings, ceramics, and videos. Her work is multisensory and often uses living or organic materials. She lives in Los Angeles, where she co-founded Monte Vista Projects and teaches as an associate professor in the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture.

Lin was born in Concord, Massachusetts, and studied at Brown University (BA in Visual Arts and Art Semiotics, 2001) and the San Francisco Art Institute (MFA in New Genres, 2004). She is known for mixing careful cultural research with fantastical, surreal scenes. Her art often explores the history of slavery and the impact of colonialism, offering a post-colonial critique. One notable work is Dildos (Corn Hill, Queen Victoria, Bird in Space) (2012), created for a solo show at Francois Ghebaly Gallery. In this piece, corn-dildo forms are housed in bell jars in pink, white, and black tones to comment on race and sexuality.

Lin works with a broad range of materials, including plant dyes, seeds, metal, water, tea, sugar, and even unusual components like mud and experimental “microbial” substances. Many of her works are immersive and tactile. In 2017, she collaborated with artist Patrick Staff on Hormonal Fog, a piece that used a smoke machine to release plant-based tinctures designed to affect the gallery environment. She also uses fluids such as tea and urine to create works that blur boundaries and challenge conventional ideas about bodies and power.

Her art is often described as radical for deconstructing traditional images of the female body and resisting a male gaze. Lin has received numerous residencies and fellowships, including the Frankfurter Kunstverein Deutsche Börse Residency, Sacatar Foundation (Brazil), Banff Centre (Canada), the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, and AIR at CESTA (Czech Republic).

She has shown widely: a 2016 show, A Body Reduced to Brilliant Colour, at Gasworks Gallery in London; participation in Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon at the New Museum (2017); the Sharjah Biennial 13 (2017); Made in L.A. 2018 at the Hammer Museum; a 2018 solo show in Chicago, A Hard White Body, a Porous Slip, at Logan Center Exhibitions; and a 2024 solo exhibition, The Animal Husband, at Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh, marking her first solo show in Scotland.