Thirty spoke
Share one hub.
Adapt the nothing therein to the purpose in hand, and you will have the use of the cart. Knead clay in order to make a vessel. Adapt the nothing therein to the purpose in hand, and you will have the use of the vessel. Cut out doors and windows in order to make a room. Adapt the nothing therein to the purpose in hand, and you will have the use of the room.
– Laozi, Tao Te Ching, verse XI

A cart moves by virtue of its empty center. A vessel holds because of its hollow. A room is made by what is cut out–by openings that allow entry, air, and light. It is the condition of absence that renders a generative structure.

Form gives structure. Emptiness gives function. As Laozi alludes to, “the use” here emerges from a productive tension between what is present and what is withheld, where solidity and aperture operate in tandem and where absence is not a negotiation but an activator. Leah Liu Yutong’s practice rests on the understanding that empty space is a condition for resonance and modulation. Working across sculpture and sound, Liu configures hollow modules into recursive assemblages that resist closure and stability. It is from this orientation that “susurrus 聲聲私” emerges, extending the inquiry into how forms speak through what they withhold. The title “susurrus” names a soft murmur: a breath passing through a body, a wind brushing against an opening, an air moving through a cavity. It is a sound that lingers.

Hollow chambers and folded enclosures seem to hold air as much as material. Liu’s works begin with a three-dimensional sensation. Forms are felt before they are named, often arriving from infrastructures or enclosing gestures–structures that contain, surround, or quietly support. The images are not flat. She sees them as volumes shaped by weight and balance, and feels a need to touch, to make, to test them through the body within the space she inhabits. Trained in sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Liu brings these sensations to forms of being. She utilizes repetition and misalignment to create absence and open gaps where forms loosen and new possibilities emerge. In this way, Liu’s practice resonates with Taoism philosophy, that ideas of “the Way (道)” and “Wu wei (无为)”, where making unfolds through attentiveness and intuition rather than force.“susurrus 聲聲私” brings together seven works developed from Liu’s time at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and her current residency at the NARS Foundation. Together, the works trace a vertical progression that moves from forms anchored to the ground pieces that climb the wall. Corners thicken, folds accumulate weight, and objects are allowed to hold themselves. Liu’s “susurrus 聲聲私” yields to gravity, guiding how each form arrives and remains.

To dwell is to resonate; to make is to hold space for air, being, and relation.

–
Artist Bio

Leah Liu Yutong (b. 2002, Beijing) is a New York–based artist whose practice spans sculpture and sound. She received her B.F.A. in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2025. Through cast hollow chambers and modular assemblages, Liu probes absence and deviation to destabilize the coherence of structural systems. Her practice unfolds through seriality and misalignment, from which gaps emerge as sites of potential. At the core of this approach is an investment in absence–an understanding that emptiness is not a lack but a condition that enables new forms of use, resonance, and modulation. Liu’s assemblages resist closure and stability, allowing form to fracture, to shift and to reorganize.
Liu’s work has been exhibited widely in the United States and China, including Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Providence (2023); Field Projects, New York (2026); Gelman Gallery, Providence (2025); Woods-Gerry Gallery, Providence (2025); Acentric Space Gallery, Shanghai (2024); and 6 DeFore Place, Providence (2025).

She has participated in residencies at the NARS Foundation International Residency, New York (2026); Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Maine (2025); Arts Letters & Numbers, Averill Park (2024); and Acentric Space, Shanghai (2024). Upcoming residencies include the GlogauAIR Art Residency in Berlin, Radio28CS in Mexico City, and AIR 3331 in Tokyo.

Curator Bio

Vu Thien An (Thea) Nguyen (b. 2004, Hanoi, Vietnam) is an emerging curator and art researcher based between New York (United States) and Hanoi (Vietnam). She is pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Design History and Practice (Art History) at Parsons School of Design, The New School (Class of 2026). Her research considers how art mediates cultural translation, with a growing interest in Southeast Asian and diasporic contexts. Recently, Thien An curated “Tin Vịt 6 Giờ (Six O’Clock Duck News)” at Vin Gallery (Ho Chi Minh City), a group exhibition examining satire, distortion, and performativity in mass media through works by artists from the United States, Vietnam, and Hong Kong, and co-curated “Dạ Lửa – Womb of Fire”, a traveling exhibition and accompanying publication project featuring 100 works by Vietnamese and diasporic Vietnamese women and non-binary artists.

Her previous experiences include working at Eli Klein Gallery, island gallery, Cohart in New York, as well as Hanoi Grapevine, Chau & Co Gallery in Hanoi. She is currently engaged with Judith Hughes Day Vietnamese Contemporary Fine Art (New York), gmtc.nyc (New York), and Nguyen Wahed (New York and London). Thien An works as a Course Assistant at Parsons School of Design Sustainable Systems Department, integrating sustainability into art and design education.