[2][3] Lin was a core member and co-founder of the Big Tail Elephant Group (formed in 1991),[4] a Guangzhou-based performance and intervention based artist collective with an interest in urban development.
[6] One of his most notable works from this period is Safely Maneuvering across Linhe Road (1995) in which Lin moved a wall of concrete blocks across a busy street in Guangzhou, interrupting the flow of traffic.
His 2018 three-part work Monad, commissioned for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum's permanent collection, through VR, allows viewers to inhabit NBA player Jeremy Lin.
Lin put prolonged physical exertion and heavy labour on display, temporarily halting and interfering with the pace of the development and offering a horizontal slowness in response to rapid verticalisation.
[9] "Shark-Proof Web" (1997) : Lin disassembled a copy of Hong Kong's Basic Law and scattered the sheets of paper on the surface of a pool in Victoria Park.
Named after the nets that protect swimmers from sharks in the waters around Hong Kong, this performance is a metaphor for the future under the Basic Law, and an invitation to the viewer to imagine the accompanying uncertainty.
[1] "A Kind of Machine Called Liberation" (2003) : A performance in New York, Lin laid flat on the ground with his leg trapped underneath a circular structure made of bricks.
The breach between the reality simulated in the suggestive images of the army propaganda and the actuality of the news event once again revealed to the artist the efficiency of those structures constituting consciousness, reminding him on his childhood education.
Yet the hero's figure is gradually fading, and his image become increasingly blurred with every step, making him a kind of phantom, haunting the public's dreams and minds throughout history.
[10] "Typhoon" (2019) : Lin dressed in white pyjamas, walked slowly on metal stilts, which are commonly used by American workers, down a Guangzhou street in the middle of the night, the period during which had less chance of being interrupted by government officials.