Bio

Miao Xuan Liu (b 1998 Qingdao, China) is an emerging sculptor interested in the movement of poetry, frailty, trauma, and affect through bodies and environments.  Miao sculpts with material as varied as clay, cement, textile, foam, glycerin soap, found object, and wax. Through the transient, the abject, and the contingent as sites of possibility, Miao probes our relationship to things which are “other”: questioning the logic which underlies our fears, repulsions, and desire towards that which is unknown to us, and the lengths we go to protect related aspirations and beliefs. 

Miao's present research interests include intersecting currents of desire and capital, informed through scholar Lauren Berlant's theory of Cruel Optimism.

Contact Miao here.

Education

2023 - Bachelor of Art, Material Art and Design, OCADU

2016-2018 - Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto

Selected Exhibitions 

2025, Tunnel Vision, Upstairs, Toronto

2025, At The Eleventh Hour, Hearth Garage, Toronto 

2024, Fantasies and Foreclosure (solo), Blouin Division, Toronto 

2023, Powerhouse, Ignite Gallery, Toronto

2023, Yolk (solo) Xpace Cultural Centre, Toronto

2023, Break it to me Gently, Patel Brown Gallery, Toronto ON

2022, Blueprints for a Collective Home, Shoes Off Collective, OCAD University, Toronto ON 

2020, now that the artifice is dissolved, Hearth Garage, Toronto ON

2020, Everything Came Back to Me, the abandoned lot at Cunningham, Toronto ON

Professional Affiliations 

2025 - "Solace is a Being Made of Light", play written by Philip O'Campo accompanying At the Eleventh Hour at Hearth Garage, actor 

2024 - Wet Felting Workshop Host on behalf of Shoes Off Collective, Xpace Cultural Centre

2024 - Performer with Akash Inbakumar, Partners in Art, ARTrageous Fundraiser

2022 - current Shoes Off Pan-Asian Artist Collective, Core Member

2023 - MOCA Emerging in the Arts Workshop, Toronto 

2023- Current - Set Dresser, Film Industry, Toronto

Jan - April 2024 - Ceramics Instructor, City of Toronto, ON

2023 - Artist Talk, Ignite Gallery, Toronto ON  

2023, 2024 - Fabrication Assistant, Installation Assistant, Alexa Hatanaka, multiple projects, Toronto ON



2023 - Artist Assistant, Akash Inbakumar, Toronto ON

2022 - Felting Workshop Host, Shoes Off Collective, Toronto ON

2022 - Weaving Workshop Host, Silverfish Magazine, Toronto ON

2020 - 2023 - Monitor, Plastics Fabrication Studio, OCAD University, Toronto ON

2018 - NSERC, Undergraduate Student Research Award, University of Toronto, Botany Laboratory under supervision of Dr. Rowan Sage  

Residencies 

2023, Dias:stories: Tender Curiosities, SSHRC Funded Workshop and Community Research Group 

2023, Xpace OCADU Graduates Residency, Toronto 

2021-2022, Monuments of the Future, International Dialogue on Design, Research, and Memory Culture, OCADU, Harvard University, Goethe Institute, and Academy of Media Arts Cologne, Toronto and Germany

2022, Metal Studio Summer Resident, Harbourfront Centre for Craft and Design, Toronto ON 

2020, Silverfish Magazine, Artists and Writers Residency, Toronto ON


Using Format