Immigration of Ceramics

Linda Nguyen Lopez

1981

Linda Nguyen Lopez is a Vietnamese/Mexican American ceramic artist based in the United States. She studied Asian ceramics in the Western education system. The artist has a particular interest in the texture and color of ceramics and has been working on experimental projects using mundane objects as her main motifs. Lopez participated as an artist in the residency program at Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana (2013) and the Clay Studio in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (2010–2012). She also had numerous solo exhibitions in Italy, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, including Craft Contemporary in Los Angeles (2018), Museum of Arts & Design in New York (2019), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas (2021), Long Beach Museum of Art (2016) in Long Beach, California. Her works are part of collections such as the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the JP Morgan Chase Collection in New York, and the Renwick Gallery in Washington D.C.

Linda Nguyen Lopez explores her identity as Vietnamese, Mexican, and American and infuses them into ceramics. The artist creates ceramic sculptures that personify everyday objects, which began from her childhood experience of communicating with her Vietnamese mother through common household objects around her. The Furry series, which represents this tendency, focuses on micro-objects, such as dust from a cleaning mop or lint from clothes. By overlapping elongated clay droplets made by hand, things that are difficult to recognize in everyday life, such as ‘dusters’ and ‘mops’ are shown in a humorous way. Truths, the major series along with Furry, is a furniture type of work that can actually be sat on. It is expressed in a colorful and dynamic form by adopting sculptural shape derived from natural motifs of Vietnam and mosaic elements of Mexico. This artistic world of Lopez stems from the linguistic difficulties she experienced as an immigrant and her upbringing influenced by her parents’ cultural heritage.

For this exhibition, the artist stayed in Gwangju for two weeks and executed parts of the Furry and Truths series.