Artists to Watch
The Language of Form

Heidi Lau (b. 1987) studies the pliancy of time with her clay-inspired work. Her hand-built sculptures span compact figures to immersive, site-responsive environments, formed through steady accretion. Vertebral stacks and mineral-like surfaces hint at architectural memory and imagined relics, while mythic and historical references guide her forms.

Influenced by mingqi—Chinese burial figures—Lau develops vessels that act as portals into states of growth, loss, and renewal. Glazed clay, glass, and bronze are transformed into hybrid beings that feel ancient yet still unfolding, holding traces of landscape and spirit within their contours.

Born in Macao and now based in New York, Lau has exhibited at institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Macao Museum of Art, and Matthew Brown Los Angeles, with additional presentations at venues including Wave Hill and the Boston Center for the Arts. Her work has also been featured in the Macau-China Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

Through an intimate, materially attentive practice, Sayan Chanda (b. 1989) reimagines votive forms, folk divinities, and mythic lineages with fiber and clay. Weaving, stitching, dyeing, and hand-building techniques unfold as instinctive gestures, giving rise to entities that feel ceremonial yet unbound by fixed place or era.

Domestic materials often anchor Chanda’s process: vintage Bengali quilts are torn into strips, dyed, and rewoven with cotton, wool, jute, and sisal, allowing memory to pass through form. His works sit within domestic and devotional traditions, recalling objects made for guidance, offering, and ritual intent. Chanda studied textile design at the National Institute of Design in India, and later completed an MFA in London, where he now lives and works. His art has been featured by Cample Line in Scotland and, in England, at the British Textile Biennial, the Saatchi Gallery, and Jhaveri Contemporary.