Derrick Lin's dioramas play with scale, loneliness and giant pencils

Colossal featured the miniature dioramas of artist Derrick Lin in a June 2026 article by Kate Mothes. Lin stages and photographs scenes with hand-painted figures in nostalgic settings: a figure boarding an ocean liner, a woman waiting for a tram, a man in a fedora on historic steps, a man on the phone in an airport, and a man hiking with a dog.

What caught my eye is how he plays with scale. Oversized objects such as a giant pencil or a huge coffee mug appear in the scenes and flip the viewer's sense of size. The sets are built from cardboard and found objects: rooftops that look like milk cartons, books standing on end as architecture and steps, a river covered in blossoms. Lin has worked this way since 2013, building the sets on his desk and lighting them cinematically.

His figures often face away from the camera, which pulls the viewer into their inner world. The themes the article names are urban stress and loneliness, the wonder of travel, the passing of time and grief. Lin says he believes the thoughts and feelings we keep to ourselves are what truly shape us, and that his figures are a manifestation of those quiet thoughts.

The piece does not give a scale for the models, but the effect does not depend on it. It is a nice example of how miniatures can carry emotion rather than just detail, and of how everyday materials can become a whole city. Lin shares more of his work on Instagram under the handle marsder.

Source: Colossal