Lucy Liu on Supporting Emerging Talents and Alternative Spaces
Lucy Liu photographed at Arcus, Rachel Uffner Gallery. July 11 – August 16, 2024. Courtesy of the curator.
Lucy Liu’s curatorial vision reveals a sophisticated balance between academic rigor and a drive to cultivate experimental art in unconventional spaces. In conversation with Clare Gemima, Liu reflects on Arcus, her most recent exhibition at Rachel Uffner Gallery, where she explored the symbolic and architectural intricacies of the ‘arch’—a motif deeply embedded in centuries of artistic representation and rich interpretive potential. Liu invited a diverse group of artists to engage with the arch’s multi-faceted significance and created a multi-dimensional dialogue between structure and metaphor across sculptural and painted works.
Together with Sean Zhang, Liu co-founded Loft 121, a pop-up gallery dedicated to showcasing emerging and under-recognized voices in the art world. This initiative aligns with her broader curatorial ethos of challenging traditional exhibition formats while championing underrepresented artists. In this interview, Liu discusses the conceptual underpinnings of Arcus and her evolving work at Loft 121.
Clare Gemima: Lucy, I felt so lucky to be guided through Arcus at Rachel Uffner Gallery last month. Thank you for having me, and congratulations again on your huge undertaking. I’d love to hear more about your initial interest in the concept of the ‘arch’—what first drew you to it and how it shaped your curatorial inquiry.
Lucy Liu: Thank you so much for coming to see the show! I have to say my initial connection to the ‘arch’ was a very intuitive one. For someone who has always been irresistibly drawn to the surreal and the magical, an arch represents the most liminal of spaces. Separating the “here” from the “there,” it holds infinite possibilities of fantasy. Not until later did I realize that the ‘arch’ could also serve as a very fertile curatorial theme. It’s not only a ubiquitous physical form, but also a deeply potent symbol.
CG: Throughout your research for this exhibition, were there any discoveries about the arch’s symbolism that surprised you, or that you hadn’t been aware of beforehand? Also, which epoch of art history did the arch first begin to carry significant symbolic meaning, whether through image or written text?
LL: The Romans initially explored the full structural and decorative potential of the arch, integrating it first into civic structures like bridges and aqueducts before leveraging its symbolic power with monumental constructions like the Colosseum. Since then, as an icon of strength and support, the arch has been adopted by modern civilizations to represent victory, like the Arc de Triomphe in Paris that honors those who died in the French Revolutionary Wars, or the Gateway Arch in St. Louis that celebrates America’s westward expansion. What I love about the arch is that its symbolism is so varied. Yes, it can be a beacon of triumph, but on a psychological level, the arch also signifies change and moments of transition. By nature, it is a gateway. It’s a threshold through which one passes to leave this world and enter into the next. Both physically and metaphorically, the arch marks the passage from outside to inside, secular to sacred, public to private, mundane to magical. In religious or spiritual contexts, archways embody rebirth and a link to heaven, which is why they often mark access to holy places like churches and mosques. Think of the vaulted ceilings and nave arcades of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London or the colorful horseshoe and multifoil archways of the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba in Spain, beneath both of which thousands have worshiped over centuries.
Installation view of Arcus. July 11 – August 16, 2024. Courtesy of Rachel Uffner Gallery.
CG: With thirteen artists featured in Arcus, including those working in both painting and sculpture, how did you ensure their diverse works collectively explored the concept of the arch in its most dynamic and multifaceted dimensions? What specific criteria guided you in creating an exploratory narrative that traversed these different mediums?
LL: There were three aspects of the arch that I built the list of artists around that I hoped would guide viewers through the show: the arch as architectural, the arch as symbolic, and the arch as biomorphic. As a physical form, the arch’s geometry is boundlessly versatile, as demonstrated by Angela Wei’s panopticon (Fallen Angels, 2024) and Suyi Xu’s labyrinthine hallway (The Mother, 2024). Symbolically, the arch is transcendental and mysterious, as evidenced in Dan Perkins’ golden gateway (Gold Cloister, 2024) and Ho Jae Kim’s eerie window with a shadowy headless figure (Window, 2024). Finally, and perhaps most unexpectedly, the arch’s biomorphic form also manifests in the natural world, as expressed in the curved spines of Brittney Leeanne Williams’ bent figures (An Arch Holds a Dome, A Dome Holds a Tulip, 2023), and Ronan Day Lewis’ amorphous four-legged creature (Casino Pier, 2024).
CG: What challenges did you encounter in curating Arcus, and how did you navigate these complexities while still maintaining a cohesive vision? What strategies or curatorial methodologies do you plan to refine or implement in your future projects?
LL: To be honest, putting together this show was a real labor of love, and I felt very fortunate to work with artists and colleagues who were easy to collaborate with. Of course, it’s always the case that sometimes you want to work with certain artists for a show and it doesn’t work out, but I really believe in just shooting your shot and conveying your sincerity. It might not work out for this project, yet life can be serendipitous, and we might be bound to collaborate in the future. There are definitely artists in Arcus with whom I would love to work again on solo projects – fingers crossed and stay tuned!
Ronan Day-Lewis. Casino Pier, 2024. Oil pastel on canvas. 48 x 60 in. Photo courtesy of Rachel Uffner Gallery.
CG: Were there any particular artists in Arcus whose interpretation of the arch surprised, transformed, or challenged your initial curatorial vision?
LL: Asher Liftin’s small painting Wipe (2024) made me chuckle, that’s for sure. Speaking of serendipitous collaborations, we went to college together! I would never have expected in freshman year that we would get to work on a show together at a gallery in New York. Even though Liftin’s practice doesn’t generally connect to the theme of the arch, he was graciously willing to make a new work for the show. In his painting, the arc of a windshield wiper in motion is such a playful interpretation of the form, and it also demonstrates the cognitive process of image perception, by which methodical pointillism mimics digital pixels. I also love that he engages with the illusion of image-making, with the windshield wiper “erasing” the painting. I also have to highlight Piper Bangs’ exquisitely rendered Still Life with Juice (2024), which cheekily subverts Dutch Golden Age painting by reinterpreting its canonical tropes of succulent fruit staged inside stone niches to celebrate womanhood and sensuality.
I also loved Brittney Leeanne Williams’ interpretation of the arch. In her practice, she often depicts the arch of a female figure bending over. In her richly hued An Arch Holds a Dome, A Dome Holds a Tulip (2023), the bowed bodies of women unified in a huddle become a three-dimensional arch—a dome. This form is then reflected in the shape of the canvas itself, which perfectly frames the women.
Dan Perkins. Gold Cloister, 2024. Oil on panel. 40 x 50 in. Photo courtesy of Rachel Uffner Gallery.
CG: You also have another ongoing curatorial project under your belt. What inspired you to establish Loft 121? How has your expertise in art history and administration shaped Loft 121’s curatorial philosophy and mission?
LL: Loft 121 is a pop-up curatorial collective. My co-founder Sean and I curate shows featuring emerging and underrepresented artists in alternative spaces. It’s a vessel through which Sean and I can scratch a creative itch, and work with young artists whose work we love in experimental ways. Once we realized that we both had strong curatorial interests and scrappy/hustler mindsets, Loft 121 came together naturally. Our first show, Dimly at First (2023), featured 11 female artists from the Asian diaspora and was hosted in our respective apartments. I pulled the title and curatorial concept of the show from Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s seminal feminist text Dictée. The show was all about navigating self, identity, and belonging as Asian American women, and as emerging artists in an often unforgiving industry. It’s also very important to us that there's a supportive component to each show we facilitate, so for Dimly at First we gave a larger commission to the artists than what’s typical for a gallery structure.
CG: Loft 121 is known for curating unexpected exhibitions in unconventional spaces. Can you share an example of one of these exhibitions?
LL: The most recent show we put on, bios morphe (2024), was hosted in a cafe, tattoo parlor, and exhibition space in Greenpoint called Maison Mono. The description doesn’t do the space justice—it was really airy and beautiful. The fact that it was a tattoo parlor and piercing studio related perfectly to the biomorphic theme of the show. The exhibition featured eight artists and was organized in collaboration with Civil Art, a nonprofit that supports Asian American creatives. Twenty percent of the exhibition proceeds went to the nonprofit. One artist, Edd Ravn, exhibited an installation consisting of bacterial growths in petri dishes. He inoculated the agar at the beginning of the show, and the bacterial cultures grew into vibrant geometric formations throughout the exhibition’s run. It was a lot of fun to watch visitors recoil when we told them it was real bacteria growing in the dishes.
The curatorial team of bios, morphe (from left: Minju Kim, Ho Jae Kim, Sean Zhang, Lucy Liu). Courtesy of Lucy Liu.
CG: How do you strike a balance between artistic experimentation and the practical challenges of managing pop-up gallery spaces, especially considering there’s never going to be a shortage of artists who need an opportunity to showcase their work?
LL: This is a question we’re constantly thinking about and a balance we’re trying to strike. Sean and I are both organized, quantitative-minded people, so we’re always careful to keep a tight financial rein over our shows. What we’ve found is that even if we don’t have the resources to put on museum-quality sculptural installations, we can still engage with experimental works in our own way. Ravn’s bacterial cultures are one example. In our first show, the artist Rosa Chang wanted to exhibit a unique double-sided canvas, so we made that happen by installing hinges on one edge of the frame and drilling it into the wall so that it could flip from one side to the other.
CG: How does Loft 121’s mission to support emerging and under-recognized artists shape the types of exhibitions you curate? What criteria do you use to measure the success of your shows?
LL: First and foremost, we show art that speaks to us, whether on a universal fundamental human level, as members of the Asian American community, or in my case, as a woman. The work has to appeal to each of our personal aesthetic sensibilities. We don’t limit ourselves to operating within any specific categories, though we are aware of the communities we are a part of, and the artists who come from a similar lineage. As for how we measure success, that can come from the feedback we get from our artists, the visitors who come to our shows, the collectors who acquire works, our colleagues who give us advice, and of course, writers like you! As gallerists, it’s impossible not to prioritize sales (and luckily, we’ve exceeded our own expectations on that front), but we try our best to stay focused on the intangible types of impact that we can have on our wider artistic community.
The interview was edited and condensed for clarity.
Lucy Liu is an Associate Director at Rachel Uffner Gallery, and co-founder of the pop-up curatorial collective Loft 121. Previously, she has held positions at the advisory Art Intelligence Global, David Zwirner, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Yale Art Gallery. She graduated with her BA in Art History and Anthropology from Yale University in 2021.
