Livien Yin

She/They

Livien Yin is a visual artist working in painting and sculpture. In her current work, Yin researches the history of Chinese migration to paint speculative portraits of early immigrants during the years of the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882-1943). Her ongoing “Paper Suns” series is inspired by the Chinese-born “paper sons and daughters” who became U.S. citizens by obtaining forged documents that stated they were children of already citizenized Chinese Americans. The fictionalized portraits reimagine what “paper” identities could have looked like in spite of the limitations experienced by many at the time. By repurposing imagery from Exclusion era paintings and photographs, Yin visualizes scenes of Chinese immigrants where desire, pleasure and new camaraderies set the tone.

Yin is a second-generation Chinese American artist living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She was previously based in the West Coast where she earned her BA in Studio Art from Reed College and her MFA from Stanford University. She has completed artist residencies at Wormfarm Institute, Marble House Project, This Will Take Time and Collaborative Arts Mobility Project. She is a recipient of the 2019-2020 Graduate Fellowship at Headlands Center for the Arts, the 2019 American Austrian Foundation/Seebacher Prize for Fine Arts, the 2019 Anita Squires Fowler Memorial Award and the 2018 SOMArts Murphy and Cadogan Contemporary Art Award. Yin will be presenting her first U.S. solo exhibition in January 2022 at Friends Indeed Gallery in San Francisco, California.