Inarticulate Trace No2, 2024,
Prescribed herbal medicine, epoxy clay, resin, paint, UV resistant varnish 40 x 43 x 1.5 in

Courtesy of the artist.

In Light, Where Edges Yield, 2025
Prescribed herbal medicine, epoxy clay, resin, acrylic, varnish, stainless steel, 65 x 65 x 3.5 in

Courtesy of the artist.

Detail of In Light, Where Edges Yield, 2025
Prescribed herbal medicine, epoxy clay, resin, acrylic, varnish, stainless steel, 65 x 65 x 3.5 in

Courtesy of the artist.

Inarticulate Trace No1, 2023,
Prescribed herbal medicine, epoxy clay, resin, paint, UV resistant varnish 37 x 32 x 1.5 in

Courtesy of the artist.

Detail of Inarticulate Trace No1, 2023,
Prescribed herbal medicine, epoxy clay, resin, paint, UV resistant varnish 37 x 32 x 1.5 in

Courtesy of the artist.

Inarticulate Trace No5, 2024,
Prescribed herbal medicine, epoxy clay, resin, paint, UV resistant varnish 40 x 43 x 1.5 in

Courtesy of the artist.

Ouroflora, 2025,
Prescribed herbal medicine, epoxy clay, resin, acrylic, varnish, 46 x 34 x 1.5 in

Courtesy of the artist.

memory/

When I was a child, I drank a lot of herbal medicine. I have a strong memory of the intense bitterness of the herbs followed by candy––a strange mix of bitter and sweet. I always had a complicated relationship with Traditional Chinese medicine, because I was told as a child that I was born one year after my parents drank herbal medicine. It made me feel that I wasn’t created naturally.

Years later, I started using herbal medicine again after my dad suddenly passed away. It became part of my healing process. Eastern medicine is very different from Western medicine; instead of lab results, the doctor feels your pulse, reads your tongue, and asks you to describe your symptoms. The accuracy of the treatment depends on how well you can describe your symptoms. This made me wonder, is pain really sharable? How do I measure my pain against the pain of others? If you say your pain is a three out of ten, how does it compare to my three out of ten? This struggle is similar to my frustration in using English as a second language. I wanted to convey this difficulty with articulation, so I began preserving the prescribed herbs in my sculptures, displaying my health records like specimens in a natural history museum.

Once, a Chinese doctor who saw my artwork messaged me on Instagram. He said, “I know what’s going on with you. You can’t eat cucumbers or cold food, and you should always drink something warm.” It was so interesting that he diagnosed the coldness in my body through my art. It felt like a form of communication.

The artist’s studio.

Image credit: Gabrielle Luu

line/

Many of my influences are women artists whose work centers around memory, childhood, mourning, and violence, such as Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, and Doris Salcedo. When I first began studying at SAIC, I often visited Doris Salcedo’s solo show at the MCA Chicago. Her works were so powerful that I would cry in front of them. I remember her installation commemorating a nurse tortured to death in Colombia, where she stitched together thousands of delicate rose petals. When they were sewn together, the petals resembled a giant, bloodied skin. It was incredible how she could use the same material throughout her career and develop a more poetic and simple expression over time. That has had a major impact on my practice.

Nature is a continuous source of inspiration for my work, and I collect plants, nuts, insects, and animal skins as studies of natural behavior. I became obsessed with the molting process in nature and how reptiles and insects shed their skin to grow stronger, leaving behind a fragile shell. In art school, I started making molds. I drew similarities between mold-making and the molting process, so I would brush materials onto objects and peel them off like skins, displaying the molds as installations. Mold-making has always been essential to my practice; it evokes that something is missing through a delicate trace.

An object might sit in my studio for years before I find where it belongs. I think of sculpture as a beautiful sentence: each element has its own role, and when placed together, they create meaning. Art-making requires combing through materials, experiences, and objects to find the subject, object, and verb, and realizing one day that they belong together to make something whole.

The artist’s studio.

Image credit: Gabrielle Luu

color/

I was trained as a traditional, Renaissance-style sculptor. I love using water-based clay to sculpt because it’s very versatile. I begin by sculpting with clay, then make a cast of the sculpture. Every time I make a mold, the original sculpture is destroyed. After casting, I have to use a Dremel tool to refine the imperfections. The process is very tedious, and I often joke that I’m the lowest-paid dentist in the world.

Eventually, I became tired of the lengthy process, so I started making quick doodles in ink to loosen up my creative process. I was reminded of my childhood in China and began practicing calligraphy again, but folded the paper to create Rorschach inkblots. I think it’s interesting how I can create Chinese calligraphy, but after a simple fold, it becomes a Western representation of body and mind. These symmetrical inkblot shapes are the basis for my sculptures.

As an artist, I feel like my materials are my teachers and I’m their student. Clay is a humble material, but it has a lot of personality. Gravity will limit how high you can sculpt in a day. If you put a ceramic in the kiln too early, it explodes. The process teaches you to be patient. Nowadays, we can 3D print these sculptures very easily, but I love artworks with a human touch. It’s not about perfection; it’s about the surface and texture and living through your hands.

The artist’s studio.

Image credit: Gabrielle Luu

Written and interviewed by Hebe Lu and Gabrielle Luu.

Gabrielle Luu is a writer based in Brooklyn, NY and the Editor-in-Chief of Civil Art.

Published August 25, 2025.

Courtesy of the artist.

Wen Liu

Wen Liu (b. 1985) is an artist based in Brooklyn, New York. She received a BFA from China Academy of Art and an MFA from China Academy of Art and School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Liu is a 2025 MacDowell Fellow and a 2022 grantee of the Roswell Artist-in-Residence Foundation. She has received multiple awards from the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) and was awarded the Illinois Arts Council 2020 Artist Fellowship. Her past residencies include MASS MoCA, Vermont Studio Center, ACRE Projects, and Hyde Park Art Center. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at institutions such as The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (CT), Roswell Museum (NM), Lubeznik Center for the Arts (IN), the Chicago Cultural Center, and the National Grand Theater in Beijing.

Wen Liu

Courtesy of the artist.

Wen Liu (b. 1985) is an artist based in Brooklyn, New York. She received a BFA from China Academy of Art and an MFA from China Academy of Art and School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Liu is a 2025 MacDowell Fellow and a 2022 grantee of the Roswell Artist-in-Residence Foundation. She has received multiple awards from the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) and was awarded the Illinois Arts Council 2020 Artist Fellowship. Her past residencies include MASS MoCA, Vermont Studio Center, ACRE Projects, and Hyde Park Art Center. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at institutions such as The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (CT), Roswell Museum (NM), Lubeznik Center for the Arts (IN), the Chicago Cultural Center, and the National Grand Theater in Beijing.

Inarticulate Trace No2, 2024,
Prescribed herbal medicine, epoxy clay, resin, paint, UV resistant varnish 40 x 43 x 1.5 in

Courtesy of the artist.

In Light, Where Edges Yield, 2025,
Prescribed herbal medicine, epoxy clay, resin, acrylic, varnish, stainless steel, 65 x 65 x 3.5 in

Courtesy of the artist.

Detail of In Light, Where Edges Yield, 2025,
Prescribed herbal medicine, epoxy clay, resin, acrylic, varnish, stainless steel, 65 x 65 x 3.5 in

Courtesy of the artist.

Inarticulate Trace No1, 2023,
Prescribed herbal medicine, epoxy clay, resin, paint, UV resistant varnish 37 x 32 x 1.5 in

Courtesy of the artist.

Detail of Inarticulate Trace No1, 2023,
Prescribed herbal medicine, epoxy clay, resin, paint, UV resistant varnish 37 x 32 x 1.5 in

Courtesy of the artist.

Inarticulate Trace No5, 2024,
Prescribed herbal medicine, epoxy clay, resin, paint, UV resistant varnish 40 x 43 x 1.5 in

Courtesy of the artist.

Ouroflora, 2025,
Prescribed herbal medicine, epoxy clay, resin, acrylic, varnish, 46 x 34 x 1.5 in

Courtesy of the artist.

memory/

When I was a child, I drank a lot of herbal medicine. I have a strong memory of the intense bitterness of the herbs followed by candy––a strange mix of bitter and sweet. I always had a complicated relationship with Traditional Chinese medicine, because I was told as a child that I was born one year after my parents drank herbal medicine. It made me feel that I wasn’t created naturally.

Years later, I started using herbal medicine again after my dad suddenly passed away. It became part of my healing process. Eastern medicine is very different from Western medicine; instead of lab results, the doctor feels your pulse, reads your tongue, and asks you to describe your symptoms. The accuracy of the treatment depends on how well you can describe your symptoms. This made me wonder, is pain really sharable? How do I measure my pain against the pain of others? If you say your pain is a three out of ten, how does it compare to my three out of ten? This struggle is similar to my frustration in using English as a second language. I wanted to convey this difficulty with articulation, so I began preserving the prescribed herbs in my sculptures, displaying my health records like specimens in a natural history museum.

Once, a Chinese doctor who saw my artwork messaged me on Instagram. He said, “I know what’s going on with you. You can’t eat cucumbers or cold food, and you should always drink something warm.” It was so interesting that he diagnosed the coldness in my body through my art. It felt like a form of communication.

The artist’s studio.

Image credit: Gabrielle Luu

line/

Many of my influences are women artists whose work centers around memory, childhood, mourning, and violence, such as Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, and Doris Salcedo. When I first began studying at SAIC, I often visited Doris Salcedo’s solo show at the MCA Chicago. Her works were so powerful that I would cry in front of them. I remember her installation commemorating a nurse tortured to death in Colombia, where she stitched together thousands of delicate rose petals. When they were sewn together, the petals resembled a giant, bloodied skin. It was incredible how she could use the same material throughout her career and develop a more poetic and simple expression over time. That has had a major impact on my practice.

Nature is a continuous source of inspiration for my work, and I collect plants, nuts, insects, and animal skins as studies of natural behavior. I became obsessed with the molting process in nature and how reptiles and insects shed their skin to grow stronger, leaving behind a fragile shell. In art school, I started making molds. I drew similarities between mold-making and the molting process, so I would brush materials onto objects and peel them off like skins, displaying the molds as installations. Mold-making has always been essential to my practice; it evokes that something is missing through a delicate trace.

An object might sit in my studio for years before I find where it belongs. I think of sculpture as a beautiful sentence: each element has its own role, and when placed together, they create meaning. Art-making requires combing through materials, experiences, and objects to find the subject, object, and verb, and realizing one day that they belong together to make something whole.

The artist’s studio.

Image credit: Gabrielle Luu

color/

I was trained as a traditional, Renaissance-style sculptor. I love using water-based clay to sculpt because it’s very versatile. I begin by sculpting with clay, then make a cast of the sculpture. Every time I make a mold, the original sculpture is destroyed. After casting, I have to use a Dremel tool to refine the imperfections. The process is very tedious, and I often joke that I’m the lowest-paid dentist in the world.

Eventually, I became tired of the lengthy process, so I started making quick doodles in ink to loosen up my creative process. I was reminded of my childhood in China and began practicing calligraphy again, but folded the paper to create Rorschach inkblots. I think it’s interesting how I can create Chinese calligraphy, but after a simple fold, it becomes a Western representation of body and mind. These symmetrical inkblot shapes are the basis for my sculptures.

As an artist, I feel like my materials are my teachers and I’m their student. Clay is a humble material, but it has a lot of personality. Gravity will limit how high you can sculpt in a day. If you put a ceramic in the kiln too early, it explodes. The process teaches you to be patient. Nowadays, we can 3D print these sculptures very easily, but I love artworks with a human touch. It’s not about perfection; it’s about the surface and texture and living through your hands.

The artist’s studio.

Image credit: Gabrielle Luu

Written and interviewed by Hebe Lu and Gabrielle Luu.

Gabrielle Luu is a writer based in Brooklyn, NY and the Editor-in-Chief of Civil Art.

Published August 25, 2025.