IN CONVERSATION: ZHU OHMU
COMMUNITY
Ceramic artist Zhu Ohmu.
Ceramic artist Zhu Ohmu works with clay to create sculptural vessels that explore the relationship between hand and machine. We spoke with her about material, process, and the ideas shaping her practice today.
How would you describe your practice today?
"I work primarily with clay to create sculptural vessels that explore the relationship between the handmade and emerging technologies in an age increasingly shaped by automation and mass production. By handbuilding forms using a coiling technique that echoes the additive logic of 3D printing, I’m interested in where human intuition, care, innovation and adaptation continue to diverge from machine processes, and what this reveals about human agency in a rapidly changing technological landscape."
What continues to draw you to clay?
"Clay is a material that remembers. It records every touch, preserving these interactions permanently once fired. I’m drawn to its tactile sensibility and the intimacy of working through friction between my hands and the material. I love the transitional space where clay vacillates between formlessness and form."
How much of each piece is guided by intention, and how much by the material itself?
"Unlike the machine, I don’t work with a predetermined outcome. As the walls of the vessels begin to rise, the clay starts asserting itself by leaning and sagging. The forms are often pushed close to their structural limits, and the process becomes a negotiation between myself and the material. The risk of collapse, or the act of rebuilding after collapse, is central to the work."
Where do the handmade and technology intersect in your work?
"My coiling technique mimics the mechanical methods of 3D printing, but the process remains intuitive and responsive. I see this as an inversion of biomimicry: copying the machine through making by hand. I’m interested in the organic qualities that emerge from this handbuilding process that technology cannot yet easily replicate."
How important is intuition to your process?
"It plays a central role. My hands can detect subtle shifts in the clay body and respond in real time. Many decisions arise through instinct and accumulated material knowledge rather than conscious planning. I trust those intuitive reactions and moments of adaptation."
Are there any rituals or routines that help you settle into making?
"When I put on my studio apron, it signals a shift in mindset and marks the beginning of making time."
What role does slowness play in your practice?
"For me, slowness allows for attention, care, relaxation, and a higher standard of living. Recently, I’ve been thinking that in a system where burnout is highly consequential, slowness often feels like an exclusive luxury, sitting within a more privileged way of working and living. For my practice, especially around exhibition deadlines, there is often a tension between slowness and speed — between the time the work needs and the demands of output."
Outside the studio, you're often moving between home, work, meetings and travel. What do you tend to carry with you, and how have the Deadly Ponies pieces become part of your everyday?
"Recently, I’ve realised I carry a lot of things with me and it was starting to cause sore shoulders leading to more back and neck problems, so I’ve been trying to pare back and only bring essentials. These days it’s usually keys, phone, headphones, wallet, water bottle, a small make up bag and travel-size hand sanitiser. I also always seem to have a few lozenges floating around.
I’ve been loving the Deadly Ponies Mr Midimese because it can also be worn crossbody, which distributes the weight more comfortably on the body. It’s a simple and incredibly chic design, and extremely well made. I’ve been using it every day and know it’s already going to be a staple in my wardrobe for years to come.
The Cinch Pump is my first pair of small block-heel pumps, and they surprisingly go with so many outfits. They can be dressed up or down, and are comfortable enough to walk in all day. I love the calf hair texture, which gives the shoes a subtle point of difference."
Looking ahead, what are you hoping to explore next?
"At the moment, I’m researching how Chinese porcelain crossed borders to become status symbols and tools of soft power and cultural diplomacy. It was admired, absorbed and reinterpreted by the Middle East and Europe, resulting in the development of Dutch Delftware, French soft-paste porcelain, English bone china and Wedgwood jasperware.
I’m fascinated by how materials and aesthetics evolve through trade, travel, colonisation and migration, and I recognise parallels with my own diasporic experiences and the ways materials and their meanings continuously shift and evolve as they move across geographies and cultures."
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