Multi-practitioner artist Ujin Lin is just at home creating draped, folded, crinkled and crumpled pieces that sit between wearable art and fashion. Handcrafted from scrap paper, they’re realised digitally, through a CGI program called Blender. “It’s a workflow that’s unique to my experience,” says the Taiwan-born artist, who is currently directing a film in Norwich – which, he quips as our Zoom call glitches, “doesn’t quite have Taiwan’s world-beating WiFi.”
Origami is part of Taiwanese culture, and Lin confesses he didn’t go to a regular high school, instead enrolling in one that specialised in the arts. After graduating he studied visual communication and graphic design in Melbourne, transitioning from “a more tactile art and design” to making work that was about “answering a brief”. This shift found him moving to London and working at David James Associates for the creative director who was famously responsible for Prada’s groundbreaking print campaigns during the 1990s. The pair’s visions fused. “We just clicked,” Lin confesses. “There’s something in my work that speaks to him. What I loved about those campaigns was that they were cinematic moments with unique characters.”
Shifting focus towards film-making, Lin began to explore the world of high fashion in his work. He created campaigns for Prada, Louis Vuitton and Christian Louboutin before returning to Taiwan to complete his military service. And then Covid hit – and Lin’s work shifted again. “After a few years, I stagnate. I always need something new,” he says. Overcome with the desire to do something different, he started to teach himself CGI. “That was one of the best things I decided to do, because it gave me freedom. You don’t need a green light to make things,” he adds.
Liberated from commercial clients and their limiting budgets, he found himself able to execute any idea he could dream up. “I realised that a lot of the ideas I like centre around worlds that don’t exist.” These worlds became populated with virtual characters born from Lin’s expansive imagination. Recalling his first creation, he laughs: “I started by making an avatar called Junn, he was sort of my son/boyfriend. It wasn’t easy, and there were many nights I was pulling my hair out when I couldn’t get something to work. But it changed the way I worked and lived.”
Around this time, his mother became ill and he moved permanently back to Taiwan, where he reconnected with nature. This in turn influenced his latest project, Nymph, a virtual label that will house his wearable art. The name refers to a mythological figure but also the early stages of an insect’s life. “This state of being ugly before the eventual splendour is what I find very exciting in fashion,” he says. There’s also an important environmental element to the project. “Trashed packaging is turned into this paper sculpture and then it is rendered [by AI]. It is a metamorphosis in itself,” he explains.
Concerning sustainability, he says: “Everyone has a responsibility, due to fashion’s relentless production.” Over the camera he shows off the array of charity-shop finds he is wearing. “Perhaps there are ways to create this newness and excitement without necessarily generating so much waste. Why not create the fantasy without the waste?” he asks.
