Artist’s Statement

I make functional ceramics because I believe everyday objects carry political and cultural weight, and that objects with explicit political messaging belong in everyday use. I throw most of my pieces and pull them on the potter’s wheel, with a few hand-built exceptions. I make them to be held, washed, used, and worn down over time, such as bowls, cups, vases, and other common household forms.

I work primarily with light-colored earthenware, which withstands regular use and holds painted and carved imagery more clearly. After I throw, dry, and trim the pieces to leather-hard, they go through the first bisque firing at 900-1060°C. Then I decorate each piece by hand-painting underglaze patterns, applying colored slip, and carving back through it to reveal an image through contrast. A second glaze firing between 1000–1140°C sets the glaze and turns the bisque into dense and durable ceramic. Each piece takes anywhere between a week and six weeks to complete. I find comfort in the slow, repetitive process of one of our oldest utilitarian traditions. 

I identify as part of the global, mobile Chinese diaspora, raised in Guangzhou and educated in Jordan, the United States, and Hong Kong. I learned ceramics both in Jordan during high school and in Guangzhou the summer I graduated from my undergraduate degree. Years of participation in the student movement for Palestinian liberation in the United States have shaped my political commitments. Those experiences shaped my belief that art, like many other aspects of life, cannot be separated from the settler-colonial conditions in which it is made and circulated. I have also observed that my own diaspora has primarily told its story through the struggles of immigration and racial exclusion alone, without confronting our own participation in settler and imperial structures on the lands we occupy.