Chinese-born, New York-based artist Leah Ying Lin creates kinetic sculptures and installations characterized by fluid biomorphic forms with a shimmering metallic finish. Inspired by the cosmos and nature, her work explores the interplay between machinery and the natural world, ancestry and futurity, death and rebirth. By reconciling materials with contrasting properties and incorporating moving elements and video projections, Lin crafts dynamic sculptures that articulate poise, rhythm, and resilience amid fragility
and precarity. 

One of Lin’s most frequently used materials is ceramic coated in black metallic glaze and silver luster—a blend of delicacy and durability showcased in Lunar Moth Shadow (2023), an installation comprising two sculptures. The first, a floor piece referencing enlarged pelvic bones, resembles a moth in flight toward the second work on a pedestal—a black, metallic glazed ceramic sphere, partially excavated, with a crescent arc piercing through it. A projection of the moon’s surface expands and contracts across the second sculpture, its pulse synchronized with the sound of the artist’s own breath, evoking an imagined lunar cadence. The multimedia work choreographs a portrait of life’s cyclicality, expressed through cosmic forces and the embodied rhythms of the female body.