{"id":113905,"date":"2025-11-03T23:28:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T23:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/113905\/"},"modified":"2025-11-03T23:28:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T23:28:09","slug":"heidi-lau-bridges-heaven-and-earth-in-otherworldly-ceramics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/113905\/","title":{"rendered":"Heidi Lau Bridges Heaven and Earth in Otherworldly Ceramics"},"content":{"rendered":"

A faceless being commonly compared to a pig appears across Daoist, Confucian, and Chinese myths as an agent of chaos\u2014a symbol of primordial disorder. Known as the hundun, which loosely translates as \u201cmuddled confusion,\u201d this state existed before the heaven and earth separated and invokes the eternal battle between chaos and order. <\/p>\n

Heidi Lau<\/a>\u2019s amorphous ceramics emerge from a similar state, residing on the spectrum between raw chaos and sculpted order. The hundun specifically inspired her latest work, Pavilion Procession (2025), on view at Hong Kong\u2019s M+<\/a> museum. Lau\u2019s work is featured as part of the museum\u2019s Sigg Prize, a biennial award celebrating artists in or from the greater China region and its diaspora. Lau, who grew up in Macau, China, and now lives in New York, was shortlisted for the prize this year. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s the latest in a series of noteworthy presentations for the artist, who also recently had her work featured in a major exhibition at The Met<\/a> and next year will be a part of a two-artist show at the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco. Lau\u2019s unconventional spin on a traditional medium, combined with her Chinese mythologic and folkloric inspirations, is what distinguishes her practice\u2014but it\u2019s the primal aesthetic of her work that first draws you in.<\/p>\n

\u201cI need to make something that is equally beautiful and grotesque,\u201d said Lau as she sipped her coffee at the M+ museum cafe. From that vantage, we could glimpse a sliver of her installation below, which evokes a bridge between the heavens and Earth.<\/p>\n

\"Heidi\"Heidi<\/p>\n

Multiple chains adorned with ambiguous ceramic objects, such as morphed, pagoda-topped vessels and otherworldly, UFO-like forms, cascade down from the ceiling. Below, contorted vessels are configured over two platforms, as if placed on an altar or shrine. Everything appears to be molten\u2014either in mid-formation or mid-destruction. This miniature, disordered universe is tinged with sage greens, dusty pinks, faded lilacs, and searing bright blues.<\/p>\n

Lau points out the intricate details of a larger blue structure fashioned after an anagama kiln\u2014an ancient Japanese furnace designed to resemble a dragon. Embedded in the vessel\u2019s active surface are a small pair of hands, masked faces, and even a small flame, perhaps referencing the firing process. While its form is inspired by the anagama, it also refers to a human-faced dragon that appears in Shanhaijing. This foundational Chinese text, which has existed in some form since the 4th century B.C.E., is a source of numerous fantastical hybrid creatures that have fascinated Lau for years. <\/p>\n

Along with the human-faced dragon, snake goddesses, faceless pigs, and frogs with nine tails have also made appearances in the artist\u2019s work. \u201cThere are beings that are split in half: They only have one leg or arm. Then there are creatures which exist for the sole purpose of taking revenge,\u201d said Lau. \u201cThey live according to their own purpose and subjectivity\u2014they\u2019re not here to serve anyone else or another purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lau\u2019s interest in these creatures is personal. She views their otherworldly differences as equivalent to real-world mental illness and disabilities, which impact both her father and brother. \u201cI want to reframe the way we think about mental illness and disabilities, from seeing it as a weakness to a rejection of normality,\u201d the artist explained. \u201cOur body\u2019s worth shouldn\u2019t be measured by how useful it can be for production.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"Heidi\"Heidi<\/p>\n

A similar line of thinking informs her interest in technology, which she endeavors to make \u201cpoetic, useless, or even witchy.\u201d In Pavilion Procession, Lau incorporated a technological element in her work for the first time. A ceramic spider sits in the midst of the installation and occasionally crawls in a jerky manner. \u201cIt was programmed to limp like my brother and my father,\u201d the artist explained. She took videos of them walking and worked with a collaborator to program the robot accordingly, creating something intentionally glitchy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to make him anti-productive. He\u2019s scheduled to take four naps a day,\u201d she said, emphasizing that the spider won\u2019t be disturbed for anyone\u2014no matter which VIP may visit. <\/p>\n

Lau\u2019s fresh approach to ceramics is perhaps a product of having never studied it formally: Her BFA, from New York University, is in printmaking. After graduating in 2008, she worked at a studio that produced prints for many well-known artists, but a grueling schedule left her burned out. During a residency in Donegal, Ireland, in 2012, Lau tried her hand at pottery at the behest of her studio-mate and \u201cgot hooked,\u201d she said. In 2016, she won the Joan Mitchell Foundation\u2019s Painters & Sculptors Grant, which enabled her to rent a studio and buy a kiln. <\/p>\n

Lau crafts all of her work by hand, engraving a range of motifs, symbols, and crevices into clay with a needle tool. \u201cTo be able to give an actual physical form to something that didn\u2019t previously exist is empowering,\u201d said Lau about her haptic process. \u201cI feel like there\u2019s a current, power, or energy you impart onto the object, which was something I never felt with printed material.\u201d At the same time, she relishes the energy that the medium gives back and rejects the narrative that the sculptor is the master of her material: \u201cI feel like I\u2019m also the medium, and clay and I are laboring together. It\u2019s a less hierarchical relationship.\u201d <\/p>\n

In navigating her urge to control versus yield\u2014a struggle that is manifest in the aesthetics of her writhing sculptures\u2014Lau attempts to find a kind of balance, similar to that sought in Daoism. The artist was exposed to both Daoism and art through her grandfather, an accomplished Chinese calligrapher. He taught her that calligraphy and drawing were cultural practices, not a full-time job. \u201cMy grandfather made me swear in front of my ancestors that I wouldn\u2019t pursue a career in art,\u201d said Lau sheepishly. \u201cThat didn\u2019t exactly happen.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"Heidi\"Heidi<\/p>\n

Whether or not her ancestors would approve, family is essential to Lau\u2019s practice. After her mother\u2019s passing in 2016, Lau processed her grief by creating a ceramic burial robe. Later works continued to incorporate elements modeled after ancient Chinese burial paraphernalia. For example, From the Heart of the Mountain Anchored the Path of Unknowing (2023)\u2014which was on view at the Met for its 2025 exhibition \u201cMonstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie\u201d and is now part of the institution\u2019s collection\u2014was inspired by ancient funerary vessels. Its totemic structure recalls the spine of a gigantic mythical creature. <\/p>\n

For Lau, the loss of her mother is linked to a sense of fraying cultural identity. The pagoda-shaped vessels in many of her pieces are reminiscent of the disappearing tenement buildings in Macau and evoke her own evolving connection to the region, which she left for New York in 2006. \u201cI never feel like I fit in fully, not in New York and not in Macau,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd since my mother passed away, my relationship with Macau is less defined.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"Heidi<\/p>\n

Urban architecture collided with a number of Lau\u2019s other conceptual preoccupations\u2014grief, ancestry, myth\u2014in 2021, when she was the first-ever artist in residence at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. There, she created a site-specific work, Gardens as Cosmic Terrains (2022), installed in the facility\u2019s catacombs. \u201cIt took physically working in that environment, and having the work exhibited in the catacombs, for me to convey my thoughts on burial grounds as transitional spaces where the objecthood of humans dissipates while objects take on animistic qualities,\u201d Lau wrote to me. The work was a result of her research into the structural and cosmological features of Chinese gardens, sometimes interpreted as portals into a spiritual realm.<\/p>\n

Lau\u2019s practice is an ongoing effort to build such portals\u2014between Earth and the cosmos; between the ordinary and the spiritual\u2014via clay. \u201cIt\u2019s a devotional practice,\u201d she said. \u201cAlmost like religion, you practice every day, regardless of the outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Artsy Vanguard 2026<\/p>\n

The Artsy Vanguard is now in its eighth year of highlighting the most promising artists working today. As 2026 approaches, we\u2019re celebrating 10 talents poised to become future leaders of contemporary art and culture. <\/p>\n

Explore more of The Artsy Vanguard 2026<\/a> and browse works by the artists<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Video by Pushpin Films \/ Silas Chow for Artsy.<\/p>\n

Thumbnail: Portrait of Heidi Lau by Silas Chow for Artsy, 2025; Heidi Lau, from left to right: \u201cThe Three-headed Beast,\u201d 2024, and detail of \u201cLandscapes,\u201d 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Sikkema Malloy Jenkins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A faceless being commonly compared to a pig appears across Daoist, Confucian, and Chinese myths as an agent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[71986,19359,437,434,435,436,438,146,73573,85,46,73574,30595],"class_list":{"0":"post-113905","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-aaina-bhargava","9":"tag-artist-profiles","10":"tag-arts","11":"tag-arts-and-design","12":"tag-artsanddesign","13":"tag-artsdesign","14":"tag-design","15":"tag-entertainment","16":"tag-heidi-lau","17":"tag-il","18":"tag-israel","19":"tag-sikkema-malloy-jenkins","20":"tag-vanguard"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}