Maya Lin Interview (page: 2 / 8) Artist and Architect	Print Interview

How did your parents influence you?

Maya Lin: We were unusually brought up in that there was no gender differentiation. I was lucky as a girl to never ever be thought of as any less than my brother. The only thing that mattered was what you were to do in life, and it wasn't about money. It was about teaching, or learning. There was a very strong emphasis on academic study within the family, especially on my mother's side. I loved school, and all I wanted to do was keep going to school.

I think I went through withdrawal when I got out of graduate school. All my friends were going, "Phew, aren't we glad it's over?" but my whole world has been a college environment. I really respect people that focus their energies on education, on learning for the sake of learning. As a child, I was never told I couldn't do something because I happen to be a girl. It's what you learn up here, what you think up here. That's all that counts --nothing else really matters.

How much of your family's history were you aware of?

Maya Lin: Not much. I think it happened with the first generation of a certain era. If you talk to Asian Americans now, they're probably brought up bilingual. Back then, our parents decided not to teach us Chinese. Now they'll say that we weren't interested, but I think part of it was they wanted us to fit in. It was an era when they felt we would be better off if we didn't have that complication. Ten years later, it had already switched. Now you want both cultures when you're very young. I think 30 years ago, it was more like, "Oh, let's make you comfortable in your new climate.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I'll say, "Oh, you didn't tell us much about your family history," and my mother will say, "Oh, you never asked." And I think in that is a key. I would probably venture to guess that they didn't speak much about it because, in a way, it might have been painful for them because they had to leave all their family, all their friends. And because they weren't going to be offering it up, we didn't ask. And I think it actually got me into a lot of trouble later on. Like say, for instance, when I was building the Vietnam Memorial, because I never once asked the veterans, any of the group that I was working with, "What was it like in the war?" Because from my point of view, you stay reserved. You don't pry into other people's business. They, I think, in turn, were hurt that I didn't ever seem interested in their lives. I think again, that is very much a part of my upbringing. It's very hard for me to ask people, unless they offer it.

I didn't find out more about my family's history until later. There's a wonderful part my father told me on my 21st birthday, after we were in Washington. There was a party at the Chinese embassy, and my father was going on and on with the Chinese ambassador; they were just talking and talking. And afterwards I said, "What were you talking about"? and he said, "We were talking about my father." It turns out my grandfather, on my father's side, helped to draft one of the first constitutions of China. He was a fairly well-known scholar.

Then it turns out one of my father's sisters and her husband were Lin Hui-yin and Liang Si-chen, who are these very well-known architectural historians in China. They actually studied at the University of Pennsylvania, brought modernism back to China and helped design Tienanmen Square. They realized later on that they should be preserving more of the old than the new, but by that time it was too late. They helped bring modernism in, but at the same time they put together a manuscript documenting all the architectural temple styles of ancient China. The manuscript was lost, and then Wilma and John Fairbank found it years later and published it. Wilma Fairbank just published another book on Liang and Lin. They were written about in Jonathan Spencer's book, The Gate Of Heavenly Peace. I knew nothing about my aunt, who was this architect.

On my mother's side of the family, one of my great-grandmothers was one of the first doctors in the Shanghai region. In fact, as I was having our first child, I had a doctor at New York University, Dr. Livia Huan who's from Shanghai, just like my mother. Dr. Huan started speaking to my mother, and it turns out that Dr. Huan's father, I think, was delivered by one of these two sister doctors in Shanghai -- my great-grandmother or her sister.

So it's this very strange world that comes together, and connects, and then disconnects. But I didn't really ask much about it, growing up.

Were you more preoccupied with trying to be American?

Maya Lin: I think I wanted to fit in. I didn't want to be different. I probably spent the first 20 years of my life wanting to be as American as possible. Through my 20s, and into my 30s, I began to become aware of how so much of my art, and architecture, has a decidedly Eastern character. I think it's only in the last decade that I've really understood how much I am a balance and a mix. There's a struggle at times. I left science, then I went into art, but I approach things very analytically. There's the fact that I choose to pursue both art and architecture as completely separate fields rather than merging them. I sometimes think the making of architecture is antithetical to the making of art. Then there's the East/West split. I think a lot of it is a struggle because I come from two heritages,

Does being aware of that make it easier or more difficult to do your work?

Maya Lin: Neither. It might make me feel a little more whole and peaceful after the fact, but it doesn't really change.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. The process I go through in the art and the architecture, I actually want it to be almost childlike. It's almost a percolation process. I don't want to predetermine who I am, fanatically, in my work, which I think has made my development be -- sometimes I think it's magical. Sometimes I think I'll never do another piece again. But basically you don't know who you are. But yet I feel much better as I've hit the 40's, so to speak -- it's sort of frightening to say -- that I'm more whole because I understand. I'm more at peace. I'm not fighting it. I was fighting it in my 20's, really hard. I mean, it was a real -- there was an anguish in that. I mean ironically, the work is much more peaceful. All my work is much more peaceful than I am, and maybe the work, in that sense, is trying to find a resolution between what was probably a struggle.

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