Now available: Stephanie Shih: LONG TIME NO SEE 好久不見 exhibition catalogue, published by the Museums at Washington and Lee University.

From the publisher: “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.

With contributions by Jacqueline Chao, Rachel Du, Stephanie Shih, and
Elizabeth Spear. Photographs by Stephanie Shih and installation photographs by Shaun Roberts.”

Available via webshop.

New work, on the recording, revitalization, and repatriation of Hawaiian native bird species, for Audubon Magazine’s Fall 2024 issue. Such an amazing honor and opportunity to meet Bret Mossman, learn about his work, and photograph specimens at the Bishop Museum on O’ahu.

I’m a Visiting Artist at Stanford Arts Institute this month, giving an artist talk and leading 2 workshops: https://arts.stanford.edu/arts-institute/stephanie-shih/

Public Lecture Artist Talk: Cross-modal Conversations:
Semiotic Context in Art & Language
3–4PM, Friday, 7 February 2025

Workshop: Bouba Kiki Scavenger Hunt
1–3PM, Saturday, 8 February 2025
Explore cross-modality connections
between language and the world around us. We’ll start by learning about
features in spoken languages–how sounds are produced and perceived–and
explore their symbolic relationships with objects and categories in the
world. Then we’ll walk around campus to “scavenge” for sound symbolic
patterns, which will be used for a collective bouba/kiki collage.

Workshop: Your Still Lifes
1–3PM, Sunday, 9 February 2025
Learn about how still lifes are
powerful mediums for telling personal narratives and create your own
mini still life composition together in small groups. Bring a personal
item of significance to incorporate into your still life photo, which
you will make with the artist in a still life photobooth.

Solo show: 欣欣向荣 𝕱𝖑𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖎𝖘𝖍

15 December 2024–8 February 2025
Website: https://lacphoto.org/exhibition/flourish-the-aline-smithson-next-generation-award/
Los Angeles Center of Photography

“LACP is thrilled to announce a solo exhibition by Stephanie Shih, the first winner of the Aline Smithson Next Generation Award.

FLOURISH explores Shih’s work in the last five years, seeking to articulate central themes and approaches. The exhibition offers a cacophonous celebration of the complexities of Asian-American and immigrant experiences. Shih’s exhibition space refuses the surgically-clean white cube, by (re)introducing color, beauty, emotion, imperfection, and the narratives of culturally othered communities. So often the cultural and personal traumas of these communities are diminished in institutional spaces. Shih responds instead–often with collaborators from the AAPI community–with an unbridled maximalism dedicated to Asian diasporic presence and excellence, understanding at the same time that joy goes hand in hand with the messy multiplicities of human narratives.”

My work for my forthcoming solo exhibition,欣欣向荣 𝕱𝖑𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖎𝖘𝖍, at Los Angeles Center of Photography is featured this week on Lenscratch in an interview with Aline Smithson. 

Aline writes: “I’m not sure when I first met Stephanie Shih and her exquisite work, but I was immediately drawn to her practice that uses the genre of the still life to tell stories and explore personal and historical legacies with cultural references, beauty and humor. The tableaux are more than a collection of objects, arranged and shot with beautiful light. They are each layered stories that echo past and present histories. There is a freshness to her constructions that allows for a new consideration of how objects inform the viewer.”