Chenlu Hou

Chenlu Hou (Lulu) is a Chinese-born, Providence-based artist and educator whose interdisciplinary practice spans sculpture, drawing, paper-cutting, video, sound, and installation. Her work explores migration, cultural memory, labor, food, and belonging, drawing from Chinese folk-art traditions and everyday objects and experiences. Her current research examines histories of Chinese immigrant labor in New England in relation to broader questions of displacement, adaptation, and cultural memory.

Hou teaches ceramics and sculpture, with interests in handbuilding, mold-making and slip-casting, material experimentation, and interdisciplinary approaches to clay. She has taught at Rhode Island School of Design, Harvard University, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Ox-Bow School of Art, and Connecticut College.

Hou has been an artist-in-residence at Harvard Ceramics, MASS MoCA, the Museum of Arts and Design, Penland School of Craft, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, and the Archie Bray Foundation. She was named a 2025 NCECA Emerging Artist and a 2025 Center for Craft Teaching Artist Fellow, and is a recipient of a Blanche E. Colman Foundation grant. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is held in the permanent collection of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. Her work and practice have also been featured in Boston Art Review and Galerie magazine.