Heidi Lau

Lives and works in New York, NY, USA

Artist statement

My practice engages in the making of minor history, the recreation of that which has been lost to time and man. My ceramic work is modeled after tokens of remembrance—ritual objects, funerary monuments, and fossilized creatures—which are infested, deconstructed, and rebuilt by hand. As one of the oldest and most universal materials associated with productive as well as artistic labor, clay naturally lends itself to the fundamental reconsideration of human activities at large. Reconfiguring fragmented personal and collective memories, I create collections of symbolic artifacts and zoomorphic ruins as materialization of the archaic and the invisible, taking inspiration from colonial architecture and tenement houses in Macau that have been demolished or gentrified beyond recognition. In the process, I reenact the non-linearity and materiality of the past, molding a tactile connection to the disappearing, impossible identity of home: Taoist mythology, folk superstitions, and colonial history provide essential source material for my exploration of transcendental displacement and nostalgia as the condition of contemporary and future existence.

Artwork