The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

Chenlu Hou and Chiara No

Chenlu Hou’s objects draw from her Chinese heritage, blending folklore, remembrance, and the layered experiences of diaspora and cultural hybridity. Chiara No creates chiming bells that personify idols, demons, and goddesses inspired by ancient, pagan, and Christian mythologies. Both artists make objects that suggest the potential for sound to invoke ceremony and shared histories across cultures and time. 

Chenlu Hou works across drawing, animation, and ceramic sculpture. Her vivid objects, ranging in scale from palm-sized to torso-sized, reference ancient Chinese folklore and ritual vessels, Buddhist and Taoist temples, and memories of home. Hand-built in terracotta using slabs of rolled clay, her forms are airbrushed in bright underglazes and patterned with handmade stencils, often ornamented with playful charms suspended from nylon zip-ties. Hou’s totemic forms and handheld rattles channel humor and imagination to explore ancestry, identity, and belonging. The rattles, each fitted to the palm and made as part of a daily practice, connect her to ancient pottery traditions where sound was used in ceremony and play. Her surreal sculptures blend memory, dreams, and mythic description, reflecting personal journeys, collective histories, and a deep reverence for the physical world. This marks her first museum exhibition.

Chiara No approaches clay through research into the meaning of storied characters, myths, and symbols and how they shift over time. Since 2021, she has produced a series of stoneware bells known as Idols, modeled after skirt-shaped terracotta figures from ancient Boeotia. Painted in vibrant color and inscribed with glyphs and pictographs, these forms embody mythological beings whose meanings have transformed throughout history. Drawing on extensive archival and etymological research—from medieval folklore and Renaissance prose to Elizabethan grimoires—No uncovers overlooked connections that recast vilified figures. Each bell contains a set of dangling legs that serve as clappers that produce distinctive resonances when activated, resulting in a chorus that celebrates remembrance and resistance.

Together, Hou and No create a dialogue through clay and implied sound. Their works resonate with themes of transformation and cultural inheritance through reimagined storytelling. Their shared attention to material and mythology invites viewers into a space where living, ever-evolving storylines mirror our collective present.  

A publication will accompany the exhibition featuring an interview between the artists and curators, installation views, full-color plates, and a checklist.

Chenlu Hou and Chiara No is organized by Amy Smith-Stewart, Diana Bowes Chief Curator and Caitlin Monachino, Curatorial and Publications Manager.