Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision

Maya Lin is an architect, so they say
When asked, "Who is your favorite artist?", any student would quickly come up with names of painters and sculptors, while in rare occasions, people would think of an installation or performance artist. But do pictures, sculptures and performances define the role of an artist?

To me, an artist is a seer - an observer with a gift to see his surroundings with clarity, a gift to hear out the voice of an inner vision and to note that vision into a form. Art in itself has no intrinsic value. Its value is in its vision. The issue of the value of art should be this – is what the artist sees powerful and worthy to someone? And to whom?

If it means the world to one individual, is it worthy?
If it touches 10,000 people, is it more worthy than if it touched just one?

Two years ago, during a time when I was most tired of art and disillusioned by the contemporary art world, I watched a documentary of the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial and of its artist – Maya Lin.

The documentary inspired me, not because the Memorial was deemed by the world as art, but because it opened my eyes to the potential of an artistic vision.

As an artist, she summarized her simple intentions – to make the viewer more aware of their surroundings. In mentioning “surroundings”, she definitely meant much more than which is physical. In her graduation speech, she said,

“Art should be the act of an individual, willing to say something new, something not quite familiar. It is that collection of singular, personal visions transformed from within the minds’ eyes to the public…We communicate to future generations, what we are, what we have been, and hopefully influencing for the better, what we will become.”

Maya Lin is no passive observer of the world. My respect for her does not rest on her prodigy talents and skill or intellect, but on her firm conviction to engage people and immerse herself into the crowd. She is a student of people – she studies them and lives with them in her mind while waiting for her vision. She is not lost in the crowd. She understands that while her gift for a clear vision is unique in her mind, it can be universally felt.

The Vietname Veterans Memorial is not a sight, it is a total vision - an experience of sound - silence; touch - engraved names; sight - physical and metaphysical reflection, all united into a moment of being, a moment under the height of a painful passage of time in someone's mind.


The crowd’s presence generates and empowers her work. Her pieces are never made for self-indulgence. Instead, she is intimate with the deepest issues of her audience. She builds with an understanding of the context of her work– not just for the contemporary fad for “site-specificity”, but with an introspective understanding of the breath of people around her, past and present.

The memorial has became a place where many reflect, weep and come to terms with a painful past, and pass through changed, without being aware that “presence of the art” was what changed them.

If I delve into how the piece attains such impact, it would take pages to write. All I can say is that she brought me down a path to immerse and truly see the crowd, to make art for singular audiences and to wait for the singular vision.