Yuan Lin has another (better known) name "Wendy", which she drew from a lottery in her first-grade English class in Shanghai, China. The teacher had a plastic bag full of names on paper slips and let the pupils who behaved well to draw the lottery first. When it was her turn, she got assigned “Wendy”. In Chinese, her first name "yuan" (圆) means: a circle, to complete a full circle, or to realize a dream.

Yuan Lin is a curious person. She makes site-specific work about living the now and everyday life. Her medium is herself. She walks around, observes, draws connections in her head, processes feelings, sings, and interacts with local people and non-people.

She uses local, found, and natural materials to make kinetic sculptures, sound installations, and performances, where people can physically touch the work and be in it. The experience of human connection, be it joyful, depressing, or absurd, justifies Yuan's artmaking as well as her existence in this world. She believes art is in everyday life, and her whole life is the art she has to work on.

She graduated from Dickinson College (USA) in 2016, where she double-majored in Studio Art and Theatre and minored in Music. She received her MFA in Sculpture from Boston University (USA) in 2018 and MA in Integrated Design from University of the Arts Bremen (Germany) in 2023. She has participated in artist residencies in Bulgaria, Spain, Portugal, Latvia, Italy, China, France, North Macedonia, the United States, and Finland. Her work is often given away as souvenirs to the local people and the people that she likes.