Heidi Lau molds clay into mourning – and just won the Sigg Prize 2025
The Macau-born, New York-based artist makes ceramic sculptures, paying tribute to her late mother and Macau’s architectural history
I feel like mourning is something people shy away from,” says Heidi Lau. “It’s always like, ‘just get over it’.”
Lau’s work resists that impulse. Born in Macau in 1987, the New York-based artist uses clay to think through grief not as a state to move past, but as a condition that alters time, memory and the body. Her sculptures, informed by her mother’s passing, treat mourning as something tactile.
Lau trained in printmaking and drawing at New York University, then spent her early postgraduate years working at a studio producing prints for established artists. The labour was demanding, and the line between her own work and her production work proved difficult to maintain. During a residency in Ireland, intended for printmaking, a studio mate who made functional pottery showed her the basics of working with clay. “I never looked back,” she says. Back in New York, she took classes at a communal studio, largely teaching herself from there.
You grew up in Macau and are now based in New York. How have these very different urban landscapes influenced your work?