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02.2023 Playroom
11.2022 and so on
11.2022 Moments of Kinship
07.2022 Down to Earth
05.2021 Na Mira: Passages Paysages Passengers
04.2021 SHAWNÉ MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY: Reprise
09.2019 Becoming an Archive
02.2019 Lunar New Year
11.2018 Phantom Limb
09.2018 Loud Bodies
11.2017 It Might Be Warm But It’s Not Clean
05.2017 only to find
04.2017 Present Futures Library
02.2017 Healing and Self-Preservation as Resistance
08.2016 Strategies Toward Emancipation
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Playroom, 2023, International Studio & Curatorial Program, Brooklyn, NY
Press Release
Playroom, a solo exhibition of work by Clae Lu, focuses on bringing pleasure, joy, and comfort through particular practices and mediums the artist returns to time and again. Central to Playroom is an installation inviting audiences to rest, reflect, and meditate to a sonic playlist of improvised ambient music created together with Ben Florencio, a producer, musician, and chosen family member of the artist. The installation serves as an idealized architectural facsimile of the various spaces where Lu seeks out and nurtures communal kinship.
A constellation of wall works documents Lu’s everyday life: their main instrument, the 古筝 (gu zheng) presented as a sculptural object, paintings of a family style meal, a selection of self-interpreted scoring from the sonic playlist, and framed drawings. Dating as far back as 400 BCE, the 古筝 (gu zheng) is a traditional Chinese string instrument that is usually plucked. Lu’s experimental way of playing the instrument is an intentional act of queering, a reclamation of how it can be understood and explored, evident in both the sonic playlist and two live performances that take place during the exhibition. Throughout the exhibition, Lu asks, “What does it mean to celebrate the mundane?” and “How does my community come together to create new traditions?”