Merlyna Lim is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores memory, narrative, and personal expression. Self-taught, she began sketching and painting as a way to escape the industrial slum of her childhood in Dayeuhkolot (Indonesia) while exploring her own inner world. Her practice locks moments, experiences, and emotions into visual form, inviting audiences to engage, interpret, and reflect. An award-winning artist, Lim was one of the 2020 Ottawa Art Council’s featured artists, and the 1st winner of the 2017 Jackson’s Art International Urban Sketching Competition (People’s Choice Award). Known for its expressive yet restrained, simple yet complex qualities, her art spans multiple media—pencil, ink, watercolor, acrylic and oil—each chosen to convey ideas uniquely. Merlyna’s work embodies a relentless pursuit for the most basic and instinctive way to visualize ideas, phenomena, and stories of “us” and the world we live in.

View some of her recent projects below: