June 25, 2026
Hundreds of two-storey square homes stream past, nestled into the mountainsides and interspersed with agricultural plots of every shape and size, as I sit on the high-speed train from Hangzhou to Jingdezhen. There are literally beans and tomatoes growing between the parallel train tracks. Rain slants across the windowpane while I listen to Angela Hewitt play Bach on the harpsichord. I'm grateful that my Apple Music works flawlessly here in China.
The last month at Wangou Taoxichuan Ceramic Centre in Longquan has been intense—an understatement. After several days of monsoon-like rain, the weather shifted abruptly to relentless humidity and heat, never dropping below 27°C at night and climbing into the 40s with the humidex during the day. The long walks that had become one of the charms of the city suddenly disappeared from my routine. Fortunately, the studios are air-conditioned, making it possible to work comfortably. I did manage to keep up my qigong and tai chi beneath the heritage gazebo along the riverbank, perched just high enough to catch a welcome breeze on my walk back from breakfast.
On May 25, I met with the exhibition coordinator, assistant director, and director of LQTXN (Longquan Taoxichuan) to discuss exhibition possibilities. In the end, there wasn't enough interest for a group exhibition. Many of us were struggling with unfamiliar clay bodies and experimental glazes, dealing with cracking, warping, and other ceramic failures. Our collective goal was to produce enough work for LQTXN to acquire three pieces from each resident, while also creating work for the IAC exhibition in Jingdezhen and, for some, the Clay for Peace exhibition.
All those sugarcane nodules being installed in a ceramic audio waveform spanning the main wall of the gallery
Because I was making large-scale wall work, the only realistic venue for me was the main gallery, where my friend Alex's exhibition had occupied the space for the previous six months. Alex and I had completed our Clay for Peace project together before he returned home to Belarus.
At the time, I was slip-casting sugarcane nodules for what would become a four-metre installation of visual audio waves from Ancestral Echoes. At the same time, I continued casting the wave forms I had begun for Jingdezhen, taking greater technical risks and pushing the work further, drawing on my experience producing the ceramic blueprints for The Forgotten Man.
Liu Rui encouraged me to create something for the gallery pedestals that would connect Longquan and its visitors to the exhibition. With time running short, I scrambled to find a practical solution. My initial plan was to collaborate with local throwers and produce Chinese tissue transfers in Jingdezhen using historical images of indentureship. The negotiations proved difficult, with much lost in translation, and the process became increasingly time-consuming.
Instead, I returned to what I know best: large abstracted ceramic coins.
As I reflected on the histories I was exploring, I realized that not only Indians, but also thousands of Chinese migrants had crossed the seas as indentured labourers to work in the sugar plantations of the Caribbean. JiaMing, the exhibition coordinator, and I decided to suspend the wave installation in front of the gallery windows and mount the sugarcane forms along the main wall. The gallery asked for six metres. Naturally, I made seven.
Somewhere in that process, the exhibition title emerged:
The Sound of Sugar: Currents of Empire.
The coins felt like a natural companion to the installation. They speak to the commodification of human labour, while nineteenth-century Chinese cash coins, with their distinctive square openings, immediately evoke another layer of cultural history. I had already been exploring abstracted coin forms pierced with small circular openings, inspired by the stories of Indian women who strung together their savings and wore them around their necks, unable to access colonial banking systems because of illiteracy. Their wealth remained literally on their bodies.
The wildcard, as always, was the clay.
Like many residents, I experienced my share of failures while learning the limits of this unfamiliar material. How far could I stretch it? Would it submit to my intentions? I made fourteen large coins. Ten survived. The tissue transfers finally arrived just before the final firing, allowing me to incorporate them onto several pieces and deepen the visual narrative of indentureship.
One of the highlights of my time in Longquan was giving a lecture, Telling Stories with Ceramics, to about one hundred 16- and 17-year-old ceramic students. Only half a dozen fell asleep. None were on their phones.
Afterwards, I was mobbed like a rock star for selfies and autographs. About a dozen students later attended my exhibition opening at LQTXN, where they stayed for nearly two hours asking thoughtful, intelligent—even existential—questions. By the end of the evening, I had exchanged another half-dozen WeChat contacts.
One student stood out. Jiahao had occasionally helped us wedge clay in the studio, and I later discovered he worked evenings across the street from the residency. Just before I left Longquan, I ran into him again. He and two friends were about to leave for Jingdezhen to apprentice for the summer. Since we'll overlap there for a few days, I'll send them information about the exhibitions they should see.
That’s Jiahao and I
It's immensely satisfying to make connections with the next generation of makers. Many of these students had never imagined that clay could be used to make conceptual work or tell complex social histories. Their education has focused almost entirely on traditional ceramics. Watching those possibilities suddenly open up for them was one of the most rewarding moments of the residency.
And with that came countless shared dinners, conversations in studios, moments of learning, generosity, and friendship. This is the first year in over 20 years that it hasn't been pouring rain for the annual dragon boat festival and races. A few of us went to the river with thousands of other onlookers and watched the boats parade, then race in heats back from bridge to bridge. Thrilling. Not FIFA, but probably a lot more fun. Longquan is a remarkable place. We travelled into the countryside to witness a dragon kiln firing, visited a kiln master's extraordinary collection of ancient celadons, and hiked through the forest to the remains of Song- and Ming-dynasty kilns.
Hangzhou was a jarring return to city life, but beautiful in entirely different ways. The China National Silk Museum, the exceptional museums devoted to celadon and silk, and, of course, the legendary West Lake. The lotus alone were worth the journey.
Now I move into the final chapter of this adventure: the IAC conference, followed by my post-conference travels.
Stay tuned...
