[BIO]
Lulu Lin is an interdisciplinary illustrator known for distinctive images that twist and reimagine the human form. Their drawings are lumpy, fleshy, and unexpectedly tender, blending playfulness with unease. The work feels surreal and engrossing, inviting viewers to linger as familiarity slips into something delightfully strange.
[DR] Your educational background is quite interesting – you studied industrial design before moving into communication design. What triggered that shift, and does your industrial design background still influence the way you approach your work today?
[LL] I began shifting from industrial design to communication design as I gradually understood what I’m most drawn to. While studying industrial design, I became more aware of material use and the importance of not creating unnecessarily. At the same time, I realized that what interests me most is not the final object itself, but the ideas, meanings, and authenticity behind it, and how those are expressed through small details.
I found myself more engaged in the process of exploring and understanding rather than focusing on delivering a finished outcome, which led me toward communication design.
My industrial design background still supports my work in many ways, especially in terms of project management, technical skills, and maintaining a mindset that values purpose and avoids excess.
[DR] In previous interviews you’ve mentioned enjoying shows like BoJack Horseman. What fascinates you about works that appear visually simple or naïve in style (in the best sense of the word), yet carry such psychological depth? Do you think complex subjects can sometimes be easier to approach through a friendlier visual language?
[LL] For me, what makes it powerful is how those moments of humor exist within something quite unbearable. They don’t take away from the weight of the subject, but instead make it more human, and in a way more honest.
So I don’t necessarily see it as making complex topics easier through a friendlier style. It’s more about creating space within that complexity, where humor and surreal elements help you stay with the discomfort rather than turn away from it.
[DR] Some of the images feel emotional or melancholic, yet there is often something subtly humorous in them. Can humor play a role in how we process uncomfortable emotions?
[LL] I think the humor comes quite naturally because my illustrations are really a reflection of my personality. It’s not something I consciously add, it’s more that humor is one of the ways I seem to process things myself.
Even when the emotions are heavier or more melancholic, that subtle humor tends to remain. I think it acts as a kind of mechanism that helps me sit with those feelings and make sense of them, rather than avoid them.
[DR] Your practice often feels very personal, almost like emotional self-portraits. Does showing that level of vulnerability ever create anxiety about how people might interpret it?
[LL] Yes, I do feel a certain unease about that level of intimacy and vulnerability. Sharing something so personal can be uncomfortable, especially not knowing how it might be interpreted.
At the same time, what makes it easier is that not everyone connects with or reads my illustrations in that way. The people who really understand them tend to be either very close friends or complete strangers who don’t know anything about me personally. That distance, in different ways, creates a kind of safety.
It’s a bit strange when I think about it, but for now it feels manageable, and it’s something I’m still figuring out as I go.
[DR] There is a long tradition in art history of the grotesque body – exaggerated noses, swollen forms, distorted expressions. Have artists from the past influenced the distortions in your work, or do they come from somewhere more personal?
[LL] I haven’t really thought about it in relation to art history. It feels more personal and intuitive than being influenced by specific artists or traditions.
[DR] I read about your thoughts on how the beauty–ugliness dichotomy can feel limiting, even describing it as somewhat rooted in patriarchal thinking, and that if one duality must exist, it would rather be interesting or boring. What does an “interesting face” or illustration mean to you?
[DR] Following that thought – can ugliness also be beautiful? Or is beauty, in the sense of what we are taught while growing up to consider beautiful, simply a matter of attention and how long we are willing to look at something?
[LL] If anything, I might describe something as detestable when it feels like it carries no meaning, or when there’s too much hostility in it. That’s usually what creates distance for me, rather than how something looks.
[DR] Your work feels intuitive, yet the art world often asks artists to explain and theorize their practice. Do you ever feel that explaining a work changes its meaning?
[LL] I think the work and the author can be viewed separately. I’ll always have my own reading or emotional response to a work, and that exists on its own.
At the same time, I do find it interesting to hear how the artist explains it. But for me, that explanation isn’t really about understanding the work more clearly – it feels more like a way of getting to know the author, their way of thinking, or who they are as a person.
So in a way, the work stays open, while the explanation becomes something else alongside it. I also find it interesting to see how different people form their own interpretations.
[DR] Illustration can be a very solitary practice. Is that solitude something you enjoy, or do you sometimes feel the need for friction with other people’s ideas?
[LL] I think it’s a bit of both. Illustration can feel very solitary, and I do sometimes feel quite lonely, especially since none of my close friends are illustrators.
At the same time, that solitude is where I’m able to focus and process things in my own way. In a way, client work and art direction sometimes become the kind of friction I find myself longing for.
[DR] Many of your figures suggest a very close observation of people, and you’ve mentioned being fascinated by small bodily details like ears or wrinkles. Do you find yourself observing strangers in public and collecting these kinds of gestures or features? And do friends or acquaintances ever appear in your characters, even unintentionally?
[LL] I don’t consciously observe or collect features from people in that way. But I do appreciate the differences in human features, and how different combinations can convey very different feelings.
It’s something I’m aware of, even if I’m not consciously referencing specific individuals – though there have been moments, like once drawing a muscular body inspired by an acquaintance.
[DR] Artists often repeat certain motifs without fully realizing it. Have you noticed recurring forms or gestures that keep returning in your work?
[LL] I think there are some things that keep returning. I tend to be drawn to upturned noses, larger faces with smaller facial features, tears, and also the moon.
[DR] Sometimes the body seems to carry emotions even when the face does not. Do you think bodies remember things differently than the mind? And how do you approach expressing emotion through the body compared to the face?
[LL] I sometimes feel like my body, face, brain, and heart can all act very differently at the same time. Because of that, I don’t always feel capable of dealing with all of them at once.
So in a way, it does feel like the body holds or expresses things differently from the mind.
[DR] While facial expressions carry emotion, colour often sets the atmosphere in the images. Do certain colours correspond to particular emotional states, or does colour operate more intuitively?
[LL] I think it’s mostly very intuitive. The colours come quite involuntarily, and sometimes I find myself only able to work within a certain palette.
It’s not that I consciously link colours to specific emotions, but more that some colours simply don’t feel right at a given moment, so I follow what feels possible rather than deciding in advance.
[DR] Your practice also extends into sculptural materials like clay. When a form becomes three-dimensional, what feels like the biggest difference in the way you think about the figure?
[LL] This also comes quite naturally – I don’t think too much about it. When working in three dimensions, my approach to the figure doesn’t feel that different; it still comes from the same instinct.
[DR] Are there drawings you abandon because they become too controlled or predictable?
[LL] Yes.
[DR] You have also done work in music contexts, including album art. You’ve created a piece for Doja Cat’s Vie album. How did it feel to see your work become part of that project?
[LL] I didn’t actually create that piece for her – it was an existing work. I do wish I'd had the chance to create something specifically for that project. But it was still interesting to see how the work could exist in that context and take on a different life.
[DR] You have described drawing as a diary of emotional states. When looking back at older works, do they still feel like you, or more like records of someone you used to be? Can you read a narrative between earlier work and what you are making now?
[LL] The drawings feel more like outcomes of clearing something that was clotted in me. Once they’re out, I don’t really think about them anymore.
I don’t spend much time looking back at past work, but I do recognize them as part of me. They feel more like traces of certain states, rather than something I try to connect into a narrative.
[DR] If you had to visualize a portrait of an emotion rather than showing it through a person’s face, which emotion would you choose, and what might it look like?
[LL] I think that’s already what I’ve been doing. I’m not really creating specific faces, which is why there’s usually no clear gender or ethnicity in my drawings.
I’m more focused on emotions, so the figures become carriers of those states rather than portraits of individuals. And at the same time, I don’t think emotions can really be simplified into words.
[DR] And finally – if you were to draw a Trickster, what would it look like?
[CREDITS]Interviewed by Diandra RebaseArtworks by Lulu Lin