Lin Yilin is known for his urban interventions and performance pieces with critical social commentary about China’s modernization, economic globalization, urbanization, and geopolitical conflicts. He uses his own experiences as an immigrant in the United States as a starting point for many of his pieces. Lin became known for his installations made from stacking bricks, through which he became interested in urban architecture and the relationship of individual bodies to a city. He was a member of Big-Tail-Elephant Group—an idiom that means one with many expenses—as a forum for pursuing issues related to change in Chinese cities. In 2009, Lin made Whose Land? Whose Art? at the Land Foundation in Chiang Mai, a wall installation culminating his interest in the intersection of urban development and politics.