LONG TIME NO SEE (好久不見)
- Lenfest Center for the Arts
-
Museums
- Visit
-
Exhibitions
- Current Exhibits
- Upcoming Exhibits
- Online Exhibits
-
Past Exhibits
- Stephanie Shih: LONG TIME NO SEE (好久不見)
- Emma Steinkraus: Impossible Garden/Dusk & Dawn
- Mohammad Omer Khalil: Musings
- 開花結果 Open Flowers Bear Fruit
- Curricular Connections: Teaching with the Museums' Collections
- We Love Life Whenever We Can
- Mother Clay: The Pottery of Three Pueblo Women
- Born of Fire: Contemporary Japanese Women Ceramic Artists
- Museum Menagerie
- Capturing Color
- The Root of the Matter
- "My Art Speaks for Both My Peoples"
- Auspicious Animals
- Chaos in Color
- Inscapes
- Breaking the Chains
- Programs
- Education
- Collections
- About
- Galleries
- Japanese Tearoom
Stephanie Shih: LONG TIME NO SEE (好久不見)
On View: August 28, 2024 – June 7, 2025
Location: Reeves Museum of Ceramics
Save the Date: Artist Talk & Reception, Thursday, September 26, 2024, 5:30 - 7:30 PM
Image (left): 美(國)人(The Rose Piece), 2023, Stephanie Shih (American, b. 1986), archival pigment print on bamboo paper, mirrored vinyl, and ceramics drawn from Reeves Collection, 84 x 48 in. Museums at W&L. Image ? Copyright Stephanie Shih.
Stephanie Shih: Long Time No See (好久不見) invites visitors to explore each gallery space within the Reeves Museum of Ceramics, offering an immersive exploration of hidden narratives and voices within the Museums at W&L’s nationally renowned Reeves Collection of Chinese Export Porcelain. Through 15 life-size photography and video-based still life installations, photographer and inaugural artist-in-residence Stephanie Shih unveils nuanced insights into themes of commerce, labor, imperialism, and identity. Seamlessly blending still life traditions with Asian American perspectives, Shih juxtaposes altered still life photographs with ceramics drawn from the Reeves Collection, creating a dynamic interplay between the tangible and the photographic. Shih’s work reimagines these coveted ceramics as vessels of diasporic history, prompting reflection on belonging, migration, and cultural identity in the United States. Shih’s thought-provoking series encourages visitors to consider the complexities of possession, desire, and cultural heritage.
The exhibition was organized and conceptualized by Isra El-Beshir (Director of Art Museum and Galleries) and Stephanie Shih, in collaboration with Nalleli Guillen (Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs), Elizabeth Spear (former Curator of Academic Engagement), and curatorial consultants Jacqueline Chao (Cecil and Ida Green Curator of Asian Art at the Dallas Museum of Art), Rachel Du (specialist in Chinese art and history), and Kelly Fu (Stanford University PhD candidate in early modern Chinese global history).
This exhibition is made possible through the support of the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Reeves Endowment, and the Museum Art Fund.
-
Museums
- Visit
-
Exhibitions
- Current Exhibits
- Upcoming Exhibits
- Online Exhibits
-
Past Exhibits
- Stephanie Shih: LONG TIME NO SEE (好久不見)
- Emma Steinkraus: Impossible Garden/Dusk & Dawn
- Mohammad Omer Khalil: Musings
- 開花結果 Open Flowers Bear Fruit
- Curricular Connections: Teaching with the Museums' Collections
- We Love Life Whenever We Can
- Mother Clay: The Pottery of Three Pueblo Women
- Born of Fire: Contemporary Japanese Women Ceramic Artists
- Museum Menagerie
- Capturing Color
- The Root of the Matter
- "My Art Speaks for Both My Peoples"
- Auspicious Animals
- Chaos in Color
- Inscapes
- Breaking the Chains
- Programs
- Education
- Collections
- About
- Galleries
- Japanese Tearoom
Stephanie Shih
Stephanie Shih (史欣雲) is a visual still life artist known for her painterly use of shadow applied to playful perspectives on food. Shih started making photographs with her dad’s half-frame camera on childhood road trips, but only took up photography seriously later in life while in graduate school. At the time, she moonlighted as a wedding cake maker, and translating the fantastical experience of food to the visual image has been a driving throughline of her work ever since.
Shih has exhibited at venues including Hashimoto Contemporary LA, Griffin Museum of Photography, USC Pacific Asia Museum, and The Royal Photographic Society (UK). Her photography has been featured in a number of media outlets including Elle Girl Korea, 7x7, Bloomberg Businessweek, Gastronomica, Buzzfeed, and the Los Angeles Times.
Shih is from the San Francisco Bay Area and currently lives in Los Angeles. When note in the studio or kitchen creating, she is a professor at the University of Southern California.
In Wilson Hall studio at W&L, May 2023, during the Museums’ Artist-in-Residence Program. Photo courtesy of the artist.
LONG TIME NO SEE (好久不見) is a series of photograph and motion-based still life installations that delve into the complexities of the diasporic experience in America: presence/absence, integration/alienation, trauma/healing. The project mines the Asian export porcelain collection at the Museums at Washington & Lee, drawing pieces from before the first major waves of Asian immigration to the U.S. in the 1800s through the early 20th century. In the project, I directly intervene in the ongoing biographies of these export ceramics—themselves also diasporic objects—and create layered conversations with archival materials, personal experiences, art and cultural histories, and the natural world around southwestern Virginia, where the ceramics now reside. The resulting installation, which couples altered photographs with three-dimensional museum objects, is a physical metaphor for presence and absence, challenging the viewer to actively confront the (ir)recoverability of wholeness in the face of history. Much of the diasporic experience involves grappling with the continued amputation of the context of our origins, histories, and cultural practices when we are perceived as cultural “others” in American society. In weaving together historical and contemporary Asian American experiences, this project celebrates a transfer of narrative agency and power back to diasporic voices.
Exhibition Companion Website
View the to find more information about Stephanie Shih’s work and time at the Museums at W&L.
Museum Shop
The Museums at W&L announces the September 2024 release of Stephanie Shih: LONG TIME NO SEE 好久不見, a publication highlighting the Museums’ inaugural Artist-in-Residence exhibition and its celebrated collection of Chinese export porcelain.
With contributions by Jacqueline Chao, Rachel Du, Stephanie Shih, and Elizabeth Spear. Photographs by Stephanie Shih and installation photographs by Shaun Roberts.
This beautifully produced hardcover catalog features 15 full-color reproductions of Shih’s photographic still-life series, which reimagine ceramics drawn from the nationally renowned Reeves Collection of Chinese export porcelain as vessels of diasporic history. Engaging texts by curators and scholars reveal the nuanced history of the China Trade and explore themes of commerce, labor, and identity through the lens of Chinese export ceramics and Shih’s still lives.
Events and Programming
Lunch & Learn: Buried Stories, Hidden Lives
Select Days in 2025 and Locations, 12:00 – 1:00 PM; Lunch served at 11:30 AM
Join the Art Museum and Galleries for a Winter 2025 series inspired by exhibitions LONG TIME NO SEE and Impossible Garden/Dusk & Dawn. This series invites poets, scholars, and community members to consider the questions: “Whose voices and stories have shaped our dominant historical narratives? Whose stories have been excluded, erased, and hidden, and how can we render these stories more visible?” Free and open to all, with preregistration required.
Photo: 美(國)人(The Rose Piece), 2023, Stephanie Shih, installation detail ? Shaun Roberts
Embodied Narratives: Surface and Depth, Abstraction and Presence
Hideo Mabuchi (Ceramicist, Professor of Physics and Director of Stanford Arts Institute)
Thursday, March 6, 2025, 5:30 – 6:30 PM
Stackhouse Theater
Join Ceramicist, Stanford Art Institute Director, and Physics Professor Hideo Mabuchi as he explores how everyday objects, like Chinese and Japanese export porcelain, tell stories that resonate differently with scholars, scientists, and artists, drawing from his own perspective as both a scientist and artist. Professor Mabuchi will also share insights on the current exhibition Stephanie Shih: LONG TIME NO SEE (好久不見), on view at the Reeves Museum of Ceramics, examining how the physical characteristics of ceramics carry deeper meanings that shed light on issues of identity, immigration, and cultural belonging within the Asian diaspora and Asian-American experience.
For the Love of Plants: Plant Worlds in the Shadows of Empire
Banu Subramaniam (Author of Botany of Empire, Professor and Chair of Women and Gender Studies at Wellesley College)
Thursday, March 13, 2025, 5:30 – 6:30 PM
University Chapel
Plants worlds are deeply entangled in human worlds. Drawing on recent interdisciplinary scholarship in feminist, postcolonial and indigenous studies, Professor Banu Subramaniam, a renowned plant evolutionary biologist and scholar in feminist science studies and environmental humanities, will reflect on how gender, race, class, sexuality, and nation shape the foundational language, terminology, and theories of the modern plant sciences, and how botanical theories remain grounded in the violence of their colonial pasts. Professor Subramaniam wrestles with these difficult origins and lays a roadmap to imagine new biological frameworks that harness the power of feminist thought to reimagine and reinvigorate our love of plants.
Cooking Demonstration with Zoe Yijing Yang
Zoe Yijing Yang (writer and recipe developer in New York City)
Tuesday, April 8, 2025 at 5:30 PM
Evans Dining Hall
Celebrate Qingming, the fifth seasonal point of the year, with a live cooking demonstration by forager, writer, and recipe developer Zoe Yijing Yang. Discover mugwort, an important Chinese medicinal and culinary herb that grows rampant in the United States. Participants will learn how it came to dominate our roadsides and borderlands, how to identify and use it throughout its lifecycle, and how to prepare it in delicious mugwort rice cakes (青团). Bring your appetite! Open to all.
Flower Bouquet Making Night!
Thursday, April 10, 2025, 6:00 - 7:00 PM
Watson Galleries
Join the Museum Student Engagement Committee for a fun Valentine’s or Galentine’s Day activity. Enjoy an evening of floral bouquet-making and create a personalized gift for your partner, or enjoy a creative night with friends! Free and open to all.
Closing Ceremony with William R. Sargent and Stephanie Shih – “...more exquisite than crystal...": Understanding Chinese Export Ceramics through Western Paintings
Friday, May 2, 2025, 3:00 - 5:30 PM
Lecture, 3:00 - 4:00 PM, Center for Global Learning (In-person & Livestreamed)
Reception, 4:00 - 5:30 PM, Reeves Museum of Ceramics
Join us for the closing ceremony of Stephanie Shih: LONG TIME NO SEE with William R. Sargent, a renowned scholar and author of Treasures of Chinese Export Ceramics (2012) and other seminal works. Sargent will deliver a lecture on how European and American paintings and prints provide a rich source of information reflecting the appreciation of Chinese ceramics through the ages. These works of Western art not only reveal markets for Chinese ceramics and their uses but also lend credence to dating these objects. Additionally, Sargent will explore how these visual records offer unique insights into changes in taste, interior design, display, and collecting habits, allowing us to trace the profound impact of Chinese export ceramics on Western culture.
A reception with artist Stephanie Shih will follow.
Game Night: Drive Out the Pig
Tuesday, September 24, 2024, 5:30 – 7:30 PM
Watson Galleries
Join artist Stephanie Shih to discover the significance of the card game ‘Drive Out the Pig,’ which inspired her still life composition of the same name, and learn how to play the game! Free and open to all. Seats are limited and pre-registration is required.
Image credit: Drive Out the Pig (拱猪), 2023, Stephanie Shih, archival pigment print on bamboo paper and ceramics-based installation, 36 x 58 in. Image ? Stephanie Shih.
Artist Talk & Reception with Stephanie Shih
Thursday, September 26, 2024, 5:30 – 7:30 PM
Artist Talk, 5:30 – 6:30 PM, The Tea House (located in the atrium of the Center for Global Learning)
Reception, 6:30 – 7:30 PM, Reeves Museum of Ceramics
Join us for an Artist Talk with Stephanie Shih in the Center for Global Learning Atrium and learn more about Shih’s residency project, which has culminated in an exhibition, LONG TIME NO SEE, on view in the Reeves Museum of Ceramics through June 7, 2025. The talk will be followed by a reception from 6:30 – 7:30 PM, where food and drinks will be provided. The event is free and open to all. Seats are limited and pre-registration is required.
Image courtesy of artist.
Your Still Lives with Stephanie Shih
Saturday, September 28, 2024, 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM
Two Sessions: 11 AM and 1 PM
Watson Galleries
Join artist Stephanie Shih for a mini-exhibition tour of LONG TIME NO SEE, learn about how still lifes are a powerful medium for telling personal narratives, and create your own mini still life composition. Bring a personal item of significance to incorporate into your still life photo, which you’ll make with the artist in a still life photobooth. Two 75-minute sessions are available. Seats are limited. Free and open to all.
Image credit: I’m Gonna Live Forever, 2023, Stephanie Shih, archival pigment print on bamboo paper and ceramics-based installation, 54 x 46 in. Image ? Stephanie Shih.