Meet Yongxi (Vivian) Lin

We were lucky to catch up with Yongxi (Vivian) Lin recently and have shared our conversation below.

Yongxi (Vivian), we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.

My life’s purpose was not something I “found” all at once, it has revealed itself gradually, like a screen print emerging layer by layer.
As a child in China, my mother told me fairy tales every night before bed and brought home stacks of cartoon DVDs. I was especially drawn to fantastical stories with non-human characters: the Little Mermaid from Andersen’s tales, Totoro from Miyazaki’s films, and the mythical creatures of The Classic of Mountains and Seas. That book, filled with ancient Chinese myths and strange beasts, showed me how images and stories could merge into something magical. It was my first glimpse of how I could understand the world, and the first time I felt the impulse, “I want to draw too.”
Later, when I moved to New York to study illustration, I was both excited and overwhelmed. Suddenly I was immersed in a new language, a new culture, and a new sense of responsibility. I wanted my work to become a bridge between East and West. Printmaking became the turning point. Compared to illustration, it gave me more freedom with materials and techniques, encouraging me to experiment and reigniting my passion for art.
In my first semester, I worked hard to learn screen printing. My early prints were full of mistakes, smudges, and lost details. But instead of discarding them, I began to see these imperfections as part of the story. Each print became like a diary of my learning. I started focusing less on perfection and more on the process, recording everything in my process book and reflecting on what I had learned. Reflection and persistence became my foundation.
Now my work blends illustration and printmaking, telling stories that are also self-portraits of my growth. They remind me to create meaning from imperfection, to see beauty and strength in the unfinished. That is how I discovered my purpose: to make art that connects different worlds, childhood and adulthood, East and West, fantasy and reality. Each influence along the journey has given me a skill, a habit, or a new way of seeing. Together, they have shaped not only my art but also my conviction that art itself can contribute something meaningful to the world.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I’mYongxi (Vivian) Lin, an artist based in New York, originally from China. I completed my BFA in Illustration at the School of Visual Arts and is now pursuing my MFA in Printmaking at Pratt Institute. My work blends the narrative charm of illustration with the textured richness of printmaking. What excites me most is how these two practices, one rooted in storytelling, the other in process and materiality, can come together to create something that feels both playful and thoughtful.
At the moment, I’m focused on preparing for my thesis exhibition, which will take place in the spring. For this project, I plan to construct an immersive installation called A Fairytale Home. This conceptual home will be composed of intimate, personal objects such as books, mirrors, and photo albums, each created through printmaking techniques and infused with the tone of children’s illustration. Every object will hold a story and serve as a visual metaphor for memory, identity, and imagination.
Through A Fairytale Home, I want to bring together my love for storytelling, printmaking, and childhood nostalgia, while inviting viewers into a multisensory, poetic space. I hope everyone will be able to visit Pratt next spring to experience it in person.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Looking back, I think the three most important qualities in my journey have been passion for art, persistence, and discipline.
My passion for art keeps me curious and motivated, even during difficult times. Persistence has helped me push through mistakes and challenges, especially when learning new techniques like printmaking. And discipline has allowed me to stay focused, set goals, and steadily improve my work.
For those at the beginning of their journey, I would say: nurture your passion by exploring widely, stay persistent when things don’t go as planned, and develop discipline by building steady habits. These three qualities together create a strong foundation for growth in art and in life.

Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?

The biggest challenge I am currently facing is transitioning from illustrator to artist. As an undergraduate, I studied illustration, a discipline rooted in storytelling and visual clarity. My practice was focused on narrating stories through images, creating carefully constructed two-dimensional works that aimed to answer questions and offer viewers a coherent narrative. When I entered graduate school in fine art printmaking, however, I encountered a very different set of expectations. Fine art was presented not as an art of answers, but as an art of questions. Rather than closing a story, it opens multiple interpretations, inviting ambiguity, contradiction, and dialogue.
This shift was not easy. In my MFA first year, I heard the same words from my professors. My work was “too illustrative.” These words stayed with me. They became a prompt for deeper thought. What is the boundary between illustration and fine art? Why is illustration often seen as less open-ended, and how might its narrative qualities be transformed into a fine art context? Can the skills of storytelling I developed as an illustrator serve as a foundation for building an artistic practice that embraces openness, multiplicity, and critical inquiry?
My thesis project, A Fairytale Home, represents an experiment in answering these questions. This immersive installation combines personal and intimate objects, such as books, mirrors, and photo albums, with the material language of printmaking and the tonal sensibilities of children’s illustration. Each object functions simultaneously as a narrative vessel and as a symbolic metaphor, addressing themes of memory, identity, and imagination. By constructing a conceptual “home,” I am attempting to merge the narrative clarity of illustration with the spatial, open-ended qualities of fine art installation. In this way, A Fairytale Home becomes not only a project but also a testing ground for my artistic transition. Ultimately, this project seeks to clarify the bridge between illustration and fine art. It argues that the narrative strategies of illustration can be reimagined within the openness of fine art through spatial installation, material experimentation, and conceptual framing. However, this project is still taking shape at this stage, and I hope to invite everyone to enjoy it next spring.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://vvportfolio.cargo.site
• Instagram: vvportfolio