Portrait of Heidi Lau by Nancy Paredes.
Installation view: Heidi Lau, Ouroboros, Sikkema Malloy Jenkins, New York, 2026. Photo: Jason Wyche.
As part of Art Week NYC, please join us at Sikkema Malloy Jenkins on Saturday, November 14th at 1pm for an exhibition walkthrough of Ouroboros with artist Heidi Lau. This event is free and open to the public; RSVP not required.
The title of the exhibition, Ouroboros, refers to an ancient totem of a snake or dragon in a circular formation swallowing its own tail. Interpreted as a reference to the cyclical nature of life, death and rebirth, for Lau it also points to a blurred distinction between phenomena and beings.
Through hand-built, textured ceramics, Heidi Lau creates ritual objects, funerary monuments, fossilized creatures, and miniature universes. Since 2021, Lau has been immersed in the zoomorphic imaginings of Shanhaijing (The Classic of Mountains and Seas), a text compiling hundreds of geographies and fantastical creatures dated as early as fourth century BCE. The source mythologies of these cross-pollinated species, transmutable beings, and androgynous beasts inform Lau’s sculptural conceptions of a cosmic space, interweaving anti-colonial, anti-categorical, non-linear thinking with personal histories and narratives.
Heidi Lau (born 1987) grew up in Macau and lives and works in New York. Selected solo and two person exhibitions include Chrysalis Spectre, with Leelee Chan, Matthew Brown, Los Angeles (2024); A Cacophony of Rocks, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York (2024); Shadow Speak, with Biraaj Dodiya, Bureau, New York (2023); Gardens as Cosmic Terrains, Green-Wood Cemetery, New York (2022); Spirit Vessels, Matthew Brown, Los Angeles (2020); The Primordial Molder, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York (2017); and The Obscure Region II, Macau Art Museum, Macau (2014), among others. In 2019, Lau presented Apparition for the Macau-China Collateral Exhibition at the 58th Venice Biennale.
Recent group exhibitions include Sigg Prize 2025 Exhibition at M+ Museum of Visual Culture, Hong Kong; Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2025); The Jealous Potter at UCCA Clay, Yixing (2025); Shanshui: Echoes and Signals at M+ Museum, Hong Kong (2024); Cosmos Cinema: The 14th Shanghai Biennale at Power Station of Art, Shanghai (2023); and Liquid Ground at UCCA, Beijing (2022) and Para Site, Quarry Bay, Hong Kong (2021), among others.
In 2026, Lau was one of two recipients of the Sigg Prize 2025 by M+ Museum of Visual Culture in Hong Kong.
Lau’s work is included in the collections of The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland; The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York; The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, New York; Kadist Art Foundation; the M+ Museum in Hong Kong; Macau Museum of Art, Macau; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; New York Historical, New York; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, among others.