Maya Lin (American, b. 1959) is an artist and architect whose work moves between sculpture, landscape and memorial design, with a recurring focus on environmental and ecological systems.,She won the design competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. at age 21, while still an undergraduate at Yale University.
Lin earned a master's degree in architecture from Yale in 1986 and received the National Medal of Arts in 2009.Represented by Pace Gallery, Lin released Ghost Forest Seedlings in 2023, her first generative art project. The project began after she deinstalled Ghost Forest, an earlier temporary installation, when she wanted to give the work a more permanent presence on the internet. The work exists across three connected states — a print, an NFT and a video — and uses a custom algorithm, rather than standard fractal or L-system patterns, to mimic the branching root structures of trees and plants. Lin developed the project over more than a year with the technology studios NearForm and E.A.T_Works.
Lin was among the artists commissioned for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.In 2026 Pace Gallery presented her silver sculpture Silver Yellowstone, 2026, at Frieze New York.In 2023 she spoke at the World Economic Forum about public art and the environment, addressing habitat destruction and proposing solutions to policymakers.
