Icey Lin

Icey Lin is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University. She specializes in East Asian art, especially the art and architecture of early- to middle-period China (c. 3rd century BCE to 13th century CE). Her research interests include the role of art in the life-revitalizing process in tombs, the formation and transmission of icons in middle-period China, Japan, and Korea, and the integrated visual, spatial, and ritual programs at religious sites, such as cave shrines, temples, and pagodas. She is particularly interested in the issue of intermediality in art–that is, how meanings take form through the interaction and translation across art mediums and materialities–and how art makes the invisible visible, giving form to the otherwise ineffable dimensions of space, temporality, and affect.

Beyond research, she makes films and curates exhibitions. Her film projects include SILENCIO (2022), a narrative feature that received the Special Jury Prize at the 20th IFFBoston, and TO THE MOON (in progress), an art film directed by Eugene Wang and screened at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts and the National Gallery Singapore. Her exhibition projects include “Art of Life: Mawangdui Tombs” (Hunan Museum, Changsha, 2024), “Digital Temple: Kaihuasi” (CAMLab Cave, Cambridge, 2023), “Embodied Architecture: Liao Pagodas” (CAMLab Cave, Cambridge, 2022), “Fire Dream” (UNO Gallery, Shanghai, 2020), and “Who Let Those Kids In” (3137 Gallery, Athens, 2018).

At Harvard, she has teaching experience in art history and East Asian cinema. She received her BA in Art History and Economics and MA in East Asian Religions from Columbia University. Before her Ph.D. studies, she was Project Lead and Assistant to Director at Harvard CAMLab since 2018.