Bio
Miao Xuan Liu (b 1998 Qingdao, China) is an emerging sculptor exploring how histories of colonialism and capitalism have ascribed value onto objects, 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 poetic 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 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