Profile
Lana Lin is a multidisciplinary artist and writer. She is the author of The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam (Dorothy, a publishing project, 2025), which was longlisted for the National Book Award, and Freud’s Jaw and Other Lost Objects: Fractured Subjectivity in the Face of Cancer (Fordham, 2017). Her film, The Cancer Journals Revisited (2018), won Best Feature Documentary at the San Diego Asian American Film Festival and Favorite Experimental Film at BlackStar Film Festival. Her individual works and collaborative mixed media projects (as “Lin + Lam”) have been shown at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, REDCAT contemporary arts center, LA, China Taipei Film Archive, BAMcinemaFest, Brooklyn, Gasworks, London, Museum of Modern Art, NY, and the 2018 Busan Biennale. Her writing has been published in Los Angeles Review of Books, LitHub, Portable Gray, ASAP/Journal, and Studies in Gender and Sexuality. She is the receipient of fellowships from the Jerome Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, Wexner Center for the Arts, and MacDowell, four times since 1996.
Degrees Held
MFA, Bard College
PhD, New York University
Recent Publications
Lin, Lana. The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam (St. Louis, MO: Dorothy, a publishing project, 2025)
Lin, Lana. Freud’s Jaw and Other Lost Objects: Fractured Subjectivity in the Face of Cancer (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017)
Lin, Lana. “A New Autobiography: On Re-envisioning Gertrude Stein’s Classic Cover,” LitHub, September 29, 2025
Lin, Lana. “Unsettling the Living,” Beatriz da Costa: (un)disciplinary tactics, ed. Daniela Lieja Quintanar (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2024)
Friedling, Melissa and Lana Lin. “Pareidolic Cinemas,” Portable Gray, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Spring 2024): 81-97
Lin, Lana. “Book Begins with Beech,” The Stakes of Naming series, Like a Fever, Asia Art Archive, October 13, 2023
Lin, Lana. “Possibility Made Real,” World Records, Vol. 5: Beyond Story, Article 8, https://vols.worldrecordsjournal.org/05/08
Lin, Lana and Amber Musser. “Audre Lorde Revisited” ASAP/Journal, Vol. 6, No. 1 (January 2021):1-15
Lin, Lana. “Living in the uncanny,” Rosa Mercedes, Vol. 2, Journal of Visual Culture and HaFI (Harun Farocki Institut) 19 (May 15, 2020) https://www.harun-farocki-institut.org/en/2020/05/15/living-in-the-uncanny-journal-of-visual-culture-hafi-19-2/
Lin, Lana and Toby Lee. “Filmmaking in a Minor Key: A Conversation with Toby Lee and Lana Lin,” Millennium Film Journal, Vol. 70 (October 2019): 60-69.
Lin, Lana. “The Queer Art of Survival,” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, Vol. 44, No. 1-2 (Spring/Summer 2016): 341-346.
Lin, Lana. “Something and Nothing: On the Psychopolitics of Breasts and Breastlessness,” Studies in Gender and Sexuality, Vol. 17, Issue 1 (2016): 34-56.
Lin, Lana. “Tomorrow I Leave: Vietnamese refugee reunion tours as a politics of aesthetics,” Asian American Literary Review: (Re)Collecting the Vietnam War, Vol. 6, Issue 2, (Fall 2015): 216-220
Performances and Appearances
Recent Exhibitions and Screenings
Early Shorts by Lana Lin, Through Her Vision: New Cinema Re-Imagined, Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute, New Taipei City (2024)
Queer East Festival 2024, Barbican Center, London (2024)
Mimesis Documentary Film Festival, Boulder, CO (2022)
San Diego Asian American Film Festival, San Diego, CA (2021)
Nepal American International Film Festival, Lanham, MD (2021)
Ours to Heal, Maysles Documentary Center and Goethe Institut, New York, NY (2021)
European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück, Germany (2021)
Frame Work, Forum for Cultural Engagement, U.S. Embassy Moscow, American Center in Moscow (2021)
The Cancer Journals Revisited, Timeline(s) of Care, Squeaky Wheel Media & Arts Center, Buffalo, NY (2020)
The Cancer Journals Revisited, Hamburg International Queer Film Festival, Germany (2020)
The Cancer Journals Revisited, Scottish Queer International Film Festival, Glasgow, Scotland (2020)
The Cancer Journals Revisited, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
The Cancer Journals Revisited, Barcelona International Women’s Film Festival, Spain (2020)
The Cancer Journals Revisited, Internationale Frauen Film Festival, dortmund | köln, Germany (2020)
The Cancer Journals Revisited, Cinema Politica Concordia, Montreal, Canada (2020)
Cinemas of Sisterhood, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2019)
Two Serious Ladies, Aurora Picture Show, Houston, Texas (2018)
Busan Biennale, “Divided We Stand,” Busan, Korea (2018)
Salt of the Jungle, Vietnamese Women’s Museum, Hanoi, Vietnam (2018)
Now Showing, Cinenova screening programme, LUX, London, UK (2018)
Trans Film: To Speak, To Find, Anthology Film Archives, New York, NY (2018)
From the Studio, Gallery MC, New York, NY (2018)
Every Film is an enigma: Ghosts in the Darkness, The Other Cinema Collective, Spot Taipei, Taipei, Taiwan (2017)
Salt of the Jungle, KF Gallery, Korea Foundation, Seoul, Korea (2017)
Mix 29 New York Queer Experimental Film Festival, In-Between Theories, Brooklyn, NY (2016)
Mono No Aware’s X Festival, Gowanus Darkroom, Brooklyn, NY. Contribution to A Roll for Peter, a 16mm film made in honor of Peter Hutton (2016)
Home, Auckland Festival of Photography, Silo Park, Auckland, New Zealand (2016)
Rewriting Histories, CPH-DOX film festival, the Photographic Centre, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2015
Spring Watching Pavilion, Void Gallery for Contemporary Art, Londonderry, Northern Ireland, 2015
Recent work by Lana Lin (solo screening), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2013
Lana Lin (solo show), Gasworks Gallery, London, England, 2012
Research Interests
cinematic arts (theory and practice); psychoanalysis and culture; race, gender, (dis)ability and embodiment
Awards And Honors
KW Production Series, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Kunst-Werke Berlin e.V. Commission (2020)
Graduate Institute for Design, Ethnography & Social Thought (GIDEST) Fellowship, The New School (2019-20)
The New School India China Institute’s Faculty Research and Curriculum Development Grant. Co-recipient H. Lan Thao Lam. (2018-20)
Wexner Center for the Arts Film/Video Studio Artist-in-Residence (2018)
The New School Office of the Provost Faculty Research Fund (2017)
MacDowell Colony Fellow (2017)
Jacob K. Javits Fellowship (2009-13)
Vera List Center for Art and Politics Fellowship, The New School (2009-10)
Fulbright-Hays Fellowship, Foundation for Scholarly Exchange, Taipei, Taiwan (2003-04)
Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, Umbria, Italy (2003)
New York Foundation for the Arts Film Fellowship (2001)
Portfolio
www.lanalin.com
www.linpluslam.com