Helen Lin
Solo Exhibition at The Living Gallery, 1094 Broadway, Brooklyn NY 11221
Brooklyn, NY — April 9–13, 2026
to touch is to feel is a solo exhibition by New York-based artist Helen Lin examining immigrant labor, textile memory, and the technological histories embedded within craft traditions.
Drawing from fabrics preserved from Brooklyn garment factories where her mother worked after immigrating to New York in the 1990s, Lin constructs an interactive textile archive through artist books, soft sculpture, and projection installations. The exhibition connects sewing techniques such as pleating, embroidery, knitting, and crochet to computational systems, positioning feminized craft practices as early forms of programming and information encoding.
Activated through touch and proximity, the works invite viewers to physically engage with materials carrying histories of labor, migration, and survival. By bringing together textiles and electronics—two materials notoriously difficult to recycle—with the themes of human touch, memory, and earth, this project encourages us to reconnect with the tangible, affirming that technology’s origins are rooted in human craft and care.
Public programming throughout the exhibition includes an artist talk, poetry reading, and knitting workshop, expanding the exhibition into a space of collective learning and participation.
