Mingshu Li

Mingshu Li (b. 1994) is a Chinese ceramic artist based in Oslo, Norway. She completed her Master’s degree in Medium and Material Based Art at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO) in 2020. Her practice explores non-traditional approaches to clay through sculptural structures shaped by airflow, repetition, and extrusion-based processes.

Working between cultural contexts, Li approaches ceramics as a material language for reflecting on identity, migration, and the relationship between form and place. Her recent projects investigate the historical movement of ceramic patterns between China and Europe, treating decoration as a carrier of cultural memory and transformation rather than a fixed surface element.

Her work has been exhibited internationally and is included in several public collections, including KODE Art Museums (Norway), Jingdezhen Ceramic University Museum (China), the International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza (Italy), the Municipal Art Collection of El Vendrell (Spain), and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Art Collection.

Visit Mingshu Li’s website and Instagram page.

My artistic practice explores non-traditional approaches to clay through sculptural processes shaped by airflow, extrusion, repetition, and spatial interaction. I use ceramics as a material way of thinking, one that allows me to reflect on identity, environment, and the movement of cultural forms across places.
Central to my practice is an interest in openings, airflow, and structural repetition. I approach voids not as absence but as active sculptural elements that allow space, light, and movement to participate in the work. The extruder plays an important role in this process, functioning as a tool that connects pressure, air, and material. Through extrusion-based structures and porous ceramic forms, I investigate how sculpture can register transition, circulation, and instability.
My recent work investigates the history of the Strawflower motif through both historical research and ceramic practice. Originating in Chinese blue-and-white porcelain, the motif later traveled through Germany and Denmark before becoming part of Norwegian ceramic culture. By tracing this migration, I explore how patterns carry histories of trade, translation, and cultural transformation across borders. Rather than illustrating this history, I engage with it materially through porcelain objects, sculptural structures, and installation-based works in which repetition, fracture, and transformation function as forms of inquiry.
This research began during a residency in Porsgrunn, where I encountered the Strawflower motif in a Norwegian context for the first time. Although blue-and-white ceramics were present throughout my childhood in China, the European history of this motif was absent from my education. This delayed recognition created a personal entry point into the project and connected my own migration experience with the movement of decorative language across continents.
As a Chinese-born ceramic artist living and working in Norway, I occupy a position between material histories. This perspective allows me to consider both what left China and what was transformed in Europe. Through clay, I treat patterns not as fixed decorative surfaces but as carriers of memory, migration, and cultural negotiation.