Mingshu Li: The strawflowers’ journey, 2025-2026
This project investigates the migration of the Strawflower motif from Chinese blue-and-white porcelain to Germany, Denmark, and Norway through historical research and ceramic practice. By tracing the transformation of this pattern across cultures, the project explores how ornament carries histories of trade, adaptation, and cultural identity. The resulting ceramic sculptures, porcelain objects, and installations engage with history through material processes such as repetition, fracture, and transformation, functioning as material evidence where written archives are incomplete.
The research began during a residency in Porsgrunn, where I first encountered the Strawflower motif in a Norwegian context. Although blue-and-white ceramics shaped my childhood in China, the European history of this pattern was absent from my earlier education. This delayed recognition now informs my artistic approach and connects personal migration with the movement of patterns across borders.
As a Chinese-born ceramic artist living and working in Norway, I bring a perspective that bridges both the motif’s origin and its European transformations, contributing a cross-cultural and material-based perspective to contemporary ceramic discourse.
Captions
- The strawflowers’ journey, 2026, solo exhibition at SKOG in Oslo, photo by Jon Gorospe
- The strawflowers’ journey, 2026, solo exhibition at SKOG in Oslo
- Dropping Seeds #group, 2026, porcelain, stoneware and glazes, variable size
- Dropping Seeds #group, 2026, porcelain, stoneware and glazes, variable size
- Dropping Seeds #group, 2026, porcelain, stoneware and glazes, variable size
- The strawflowers’ journey #group, 2026, porcelain, stoneware and glazes, variable size, photo by Jon Gorospe
- The strawflowers’ journey #11, 2026, porcelain and glazes, 28x25x25 cm
- The strawflowers’ journey #10, 2026, porcelain and glazes, 22x30x30 cm, photo by Jon Gorospem
- The strawflowers’ journey #12, 2026, stoneware and glazes, 28x25x25 cm
- Dropping seeds #1, 2025, porcelain, stoneware and glazes, 23x32x22cm, photo by Jon Gorospe
- Soft Collapse, 2026, stoneware and cable ties, 135x95x1cm and 130x95x1 cm, photo by Jon Gorospe
- Still Carrying Blue #group, porcelain, stoneware and glazes, variable size, photo by Jon Gorospe
- Still Carrying Blue #group, porcelain, stoneware and glazes, variable size, photo by Jon Gorospe
- Still Carrying Blue #group, porcelain, stoneware and glazes, variable size
