Bio

Miao Xuan Liu (b. 1998, Qingdao) is an emerging visual artist interested in the movement of poetry, power, affect, and trauma through bodies and environments. 

Miao's work examines the metaphoric potential of matter, severing material as varied as wood, metal, clay, textile, and brick from their existing relationships to industry and production. Miao creates aspirational and vulnerable forms which evoke a re-organization of desire in the face of manufactured want and scarcity that are symptomatic of modern day capitalism. 

Ongoing research interests include grief, Daoism, the misplacement of desire in immigrant fictions of assimilation and upward mobility in North America, and what occurs when misplaced desires are seen to their grievous ends (in the constructs of xenophobia, private property, and race).

Available for local projects, sales, and potential employment opportunities. 

Say hi below or at larenkiu@gmail.com. 


Selected Exhibitions 

2024, Circle, abandoned basement of Chinatown Centre, 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, Shoes Off (Pan-Asian) 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 

2024 - Ceramics Instructor, City of Toronto, ON

2023- Artist Talk, Powerhouse, Ignite Gallery, Toronto ON  

2023 - Fabrication Assistant, Alexa Hatanaka, Toronto ON

2023 - Artist Assistant, Akash Inbakumar, Toronto ON

2022 - Workshop Host, Shoes Off Collective, Toronto ON

2022 - Workshop Host, Silverfish Magazine, Toronto ON

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


Residencies 

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

2023, Xpace OCADU Graduates Residency, Toronto ON

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

2022, Monuments of the Future, International Dialogue on Design and Memory Culture, Goethe Institute and OCADU, Toronto and Berlin

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

Education

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

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

Using Format