Ming Lu works across sculpture, installation, performance, porcelain, and embroidery to examine how power becomes naturalized through image, ornament, and repetition. Growing up within structures where political and mythic iconography shaped everyday visual experience, she approaches collective memory not as distant history, but as lived environment.

Rather than opposing tradition to contemporaneity, Lu treats traditional Chinese craftsmanship as a carrier of authority and myth. Through labor-intensive, deliberately imperfect processes, she reactivates porcelain, embroidery, and decorative motifs as sites where ideology, heroism, and gender are aestheticized and normalized. Symbols of emperors, revolutionary figures, legendary characters, and popular media coexist within dense ornamental fields, where sacred imagery gradually dissolves into pattern.

A recurring strategy in her practice is role-play and transformation. By inserting herself into historical or heroic archetypes, Lu reveals the performative structure underlying masculinity, leadership, and mythic authority. Similarly, her engagement with femininity resists simple empowerment narratives; instead, she exposes how female figures circulate within grand historical storytelling, simultaneously central and marginal, symbolic yet voiceless.

Humor, absurdity, and visual excess function in her work not as decoration, but as destabilizing tools. By collapsing propaganda, folklore, personal memory, and mass reproduction into materially rich objects, Lu questions how visual systems construct belief, loyalty, and belonging.

Operating between China and Europe, she positions herself neither as insider nor outsider, but as a witness to how power is stylized, inherited, and embodied. Her practice invites viewers to consider how myth survives, not through monumentality, but through ornament; not through proclamation, but through repetition.

Education

2018

Royal College of Art, London, UK.

2016

London College of Communication, London, UK.

 

 

Institutional Collections

Stadtmuseum Siegburg, Germany

Musée de Carouge, Switzerland

Artothek – Zentral- und Landesbibliothek Berlin, Germany

 

Solo Exhibitions

2023 Alter Charme – Neues Gewand. Galerie Olymp, Berlin, Germany.

2022 Ming Lu. Haze Gallery, Berlin, Germany.

2021 Tigress, Tigress. BBA Gallery, Berlin, Germany.

2020 Take Place. Bark Berlin, Germany.

2019 Take Place, 210 artists in a white cube. Institut für Alles Mögliche. Berlin, Germany.

2018 Pussy. SomoS Gallery, Berlin, Germany.

 

 

Selected Group Exhibitions

2026 6. Internationaler Keramikpreis Siegburg. Stadtmuseum Siegburg. Siegburg, Germany.

2025 Ostrale Biennale 2025. Robotron-Kantine. Dresden, Germany.

2025 10 Year Anniversary Exhibition BBA. Kühlhaus. Berlin, Germany.

2025 Future Icons. Gewölbekeller Project Space. Berlin, Germany.

2024 Concours International de Céramique. Musée de Carouge. Carouge, Switzerland.

2024 Biennale Chianciano. Museo d’Arte di Chianciano Terme. Italy

2024 Polyes. KA32 Gallery. Berlin, Germany.

2024 Recycling Narratives. Kunstquartier Bethanien. 2024. Berlin, Germany.

2023 – 2024 Fernweh. Mewo Kunsthalle. 2023-24. Memmingen, Germany.

2023 – 2024 4th Lativia Ceramic Biennale. Rothko Museum. Daugavpilsm Latvia.

2023 Folklor. National Agriculture Museum. Ostrava, Czech Republic.

2022 BBA Editions.  BBA Gallery Berlin, Germany

2022 Summer Art Showroom.  Haze Gallery Berlin, Germany

2021 Eine Jugend von heute für die Zukunft Europas. Centre Francais de Berlin. Berlin, Germany

2021 Kultursalon.Forum Factory. Berlin, Germany.

2021 Small Works. LiTE-HAUS Galerie + Projektraum. Berlin, Germany.

2021 Fetish.The Ballery. Berlin, Germany.

2021 BBA Artist Prize Group Exhibition. Kühlhaus. Berlin, Germany.

2021 New Currents. BBA Gallery. Berlin, Germany.

2020 König Open Call Group Show. König Galerie. London, UK

2020 BBA Artist Prize. BBA Gallery. Berlin, Germany

2020 Sunny Art Prize Group Show. Sunny Art Centre. London, UK.

2019 The Female Gaze. Theatre Deli. London, UK

2018 Postgraduate Show. Royal College of Art, London, UK

2018 Night Visions. Museum of London, UK

2018 Dangxia. Chelsea College of Art, London, UK

2017  Acropolis. VR Days Europe, Amsterdam, Netherlands

2017 Acropolis. Royal College of Art, London, UK

2017 WIP show. Royal College of Art, London, UK

2016 90 degrees. London College of Communication, London, UK

 

 

Prizes

Internationaler Nachwuchpreis Keramik “Young Talents” 2024, nomination prize. Germany.

BBA Artist Prize. Winner, 2020. BBA Gallery, Berlin, Germany.

Sunny Art Prize. Shortlisted, 2020. Sunny Art Center, London, UK.

The Prix de la Photographie. Bronze Prize, 2018. Paris, France.

 

 

Residencies

Institut für Alles Mögliche, Berlin, Germany. Oct – Dec 2019.

SomoS Gallery, Berlin, Germany. Oct-Dec 2018.

 

 

Art Fairs

Affordable Art Fair, Nov 9 – 12, Hamburg, Germany.

Art Market Budapest, Oct 6 -9, Budapest, Hungary.

Stroke, May 19 – 22, Munich, Germany.

Discovery Art Fair, Apr 28 – May 1, 2022, Cologne, Germany.

Start Art Fair, Saatchi Gallery, Sep 25-29, 2019. London, UK.

Start Art Fair, Saatchi Gallery, Sep 13-16, 2018. London, UK.

The Other Art Fair, The Passenger Shed, July 26-29, 2018. Bristol, UK.

 

 

Press

Allgäu Tv, 2023.

Memminger Zeitung, 2023.

Chayka Lv, 2023.

Purplehaze magazine, 2022.

Colossal magazine, 2021.

Aesthetica magazine, February/March issue 2018.