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about
Cori Nakamura Lin (she/her)
is a Japanese, Taiwanese, Okinawan-American multimedia visaul artist based in Chicago. By painting, documenting, and weaving, Cori is finding her way to a world that prioritizes ecological and community care. Descended from East Asian island peoples and born and raised in the midwest, Cori’s art practice is an ongoing self-archive where examines her own multiple identities as a story of self.
Cori’s work asks: How do we dream beyond our fears in the face of climate collapse? How do we carry multiple legacies, multiple ancestors, through the generations? How do we honorably re-root as unmoored people on occupied lands?
Primarily using gouache, watercolor, and paper-cutting when making images, Cori layers fluid washes with sharp paper edges to create dreamy, textured paintings that investigate liminal spaces in the natural world and her cultural identities.
She is inspired by Japanese records of yōkai, kawaii visual culture, and Okinawan textile practices, and she is currently incorporating materials and techniques of Native American basketry into her visual work. Learning from the work of Black and Indigenous feminist abolitionists such as Mariame Kaba, Kelly Hayes, and Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Cori Nakamura Lin creates art that will outlive her into the next seven generations.
Her work has been published in the LA Times, Eater Chicago, WBEZ Curious City Chicago, PBS Learning Media, the Twin Cities Daily Planet, and has been featured on the History Channel. In 2018, Cori illustrated the children’s book When Everything Was Everything, written by Saymoukda Duangphoxay Vongsay. She most recently illustrated her sister Jami Nakamura Lin’s speculative memoir, The Night Parade, Oct 2023 from Mariner Books/HarperCollins.
Cori’s artwork is created in conversation with Asian-American communities in Chicago and the midwest. As an organizer, she works to build an anti-imperial JA identity and action with her dōshi. She is an active member of Nikkei Uprising Chicago, and the Nikkei Abolition Study Group. As an artist and community organizer, she is in solidarity with all peoples who fight for Black and queer liberation, Indigenous sovereignty, the end of empire and climate justice.
She is the recipient of the IL Minnesota State Arts Board 2019 Cultural Community Partnership Grant, the Minnesota Regional Arts Council 2019 Community Arts Grant, 2018 Jerome Emerging Artist Tofte Lake Residency, and the CURA Artist Neighborhood Partnership Grant 2017-2018.