Rin Wanchen Yu is a Taiwanese painter, illustrator, and animator based in Vancouver. Her works construct parallel realities that mirror the grotesque and the nostalgic qualities of the real world. Characterized by hazy, surreal, and childlike imagery, they invite viewers into a visual experience that evokes the sensation of reliving dreams or distant memories. 

 

Born in Taiwan and raised in China, Yu’s parents were among the Taiwanese businesspeople who relocated to China in the early 1990s. She later returned to Taiwan alone to complete her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.

This upbringing—marked by constant movement between Taiwan and China—has made her deeply attentive to the themes of belonging, home, and identity. Her artistic practice visualizes the melancholic states of loneliness, displacement, instability of belonging, nostalgia, and rootlessness. 

 

Yu holds a BFA in Animation from Taipei National University of the Arts (TNUA) and has contributed to several international animation projects.

She is currently pursuing her MFA at Emily Carr University of Art + Design (ECU). Her research is inspired by her family’s multi-generational experiences of migration, reflects on the search for home and belonging—expressed in an abstract, almost psychological sense of settlement—and explores the alienation that arises from both forced and intentional resettlement, as well as the sorrow of an irretrievable homeland.