In the Hands of Wen Liu, Sculptures Hold and Heal

Inarticulate Trace No1. - Prescribed herbal medicine, epoxy clay, resin, paint, UV resistant varnish. 37" x 32" x 1.5"

Liu recently completed a six-week residency at MacDowell, where she deepened her ongoing exploration of pain memory. In the solitude of the Heinz Studio, she used the quiet to reflect and refine her practice—honing technical processes. She molded and cast a new work that will encase medicine in its organic form, herbs.

Everywhere & Nowhere - Bricks, reclaimed wooden furniture, latex. 50" x 78" x 23", 2018

Tension between preservation and impermanence, care and absence, threads through Liu’s body of work. In Everywhere & Nowhere, she reflects on the notion of belonging during a precarious period of visa uncertainty following her M.F.A. at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Drawing from a Chinese tradition in which mothers craft patchwork quilts from fabrics gifted by the community, Liu created what she calls her “Fortune Blanket” using latex-cast textures collected from places of personal significance: the red floor of her studio, the blacktop of her parking lot, and textures from the studio in which she worked. Hexagonal pieces rest on a rocking chair atop movable bricks—an altar to impermanence, where home becomes something temporary.

The Furthest Holding - Artist’s palm print on epoxy clay, artist’s father’s palm print on epoxy clay, latex mold on decayed tree, pigment. 80” x 12”, 2021

A meditation on absence appears in The Furthest Holding, made after the sudden death of Liu’s father in 2021. Unable to return to China due to pandemic restrictions, she turned to sculpture to process a grief complicated by emotional distance. Using an existing plaster mold of his hand, she pressed clay into the palm and formed a pinecone—an object she often collects while hiking, symbolizing continuity and regeneration. A smaller pinecone, made from her own hand, faces it. Connecting them is a strip of molded tree bark, but between their palms remains a gap—a sculptural silence that holds all that was left unsaid.

Liu’s recent work increasingly centers Chinese medicine—not just as a material, but as a mode of understanding the body, the psyche, and the transmission of pain. In works like “In Light, where edges yield” and “Inarticulate Trace”, she encases dried herbs from real prescriptions into clay and resin, forming translucent sculptures that recall stained glass, bones, and organs. Liu speaks to the practice of Chinese medicine sharing that there are no lab tests. “You describe your symptoms, they feel your palms, read your tongue, and give you a prescription.” This care, rooted in natural remedy and observation, is a way of directly addressing health imbalances at their core.

The Longest Remedy - Prescription herbal medicine from Chinatown, clay, herbal medicine ash, resin. 20” x 12” x 8”, 2021

Across all her work, Liu treats sculpture as an act of molting: a shedding of form that preserves the past while gesturing toward transformation. Her materials—clay, plaster, resin, herbs—are humble, yet under the hand of Wen Liu can hold the complexities of the often-silent weight and pain of grief and uncertainty. Each piece becomes a vessel for the ebbing and flowing of memory, emotion, and healing.

Returning to her Brooklyn studio after MacDowell, Liu brings with her fresh eyes after having taken time to rest, think, and set intentions. Her work continues to ask how we hold onto what is fleeting, how we make space for what we cannot say, and how we might shape a language of care out of silence.