Jennifer Ling Datchuk American, b. 1980

Jennifer Ling Datchuk is an artist born in Warren, Ohio, and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Her work explores her layered identity as a woman, a Chinese woman, and an American.

Trained in ceramics, Datchuk works with porcelain and other materials often associated with traditional women’s work, such as textiles and hair, to discuss fragility, beauty, femininity, intersectionality, identity, and personal history. Her practice evolved from sculpture to mixed media as she focused on domestic objects and the feminine sphere. Handwork and hair became totems of the small rituals that fix, smooth over, and ground women’s lives. Through these materials, she explores how Western beauty standards influenced the East, how the non-white body is commodified and sold, and how women’s work is still a significant economic driver whose workers struggle for equality.

Datchuk holds an MFA in Artisanry from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and a BFA in Crafts from Kent State University. She has received grants from the Artist Foundation of San Antonio, a travel grant from Artpace, and the Linda Lighton International Artist Exchange Program to research the global migrations of porcelain and blue and white pattern decoration. She was awarded a residency through the Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum to conduct her studio practice at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, Germany and has participated in residencies at the Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen, China, Vermont Studio Center, European Ceramic Work Center in the Netherlands, Artpace in San Antonio, Texas (guest curator: Deborah Willis, PhD), and the John Michael Kohler Arts/Industry Residency in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. 

In 2017, she received the Emerging Voices award from the American Craft Council, and in 2020, she was named a United States Artist Fellow in Craft. Datchuk’s work has been featured in recent exhibitions, such as Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., and Later, Longer, Fewer: The Work of Jennifer Ling Datchuk, a 2021 solo exhibition at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, in Houston, TX, curated by Kathryn Hall. Her work has been featured in a solo publication, Jennifer Ling Datchuk: Half, by French and Michigan, San Antonio, TX. She has been featured in publications such as The Guardian, Vogue, and American Craft Magazine.

Her work is in the collection at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX; Cc Foundation, Shanghai, China;  Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; San Antonio Museum of Art, TX and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA. She is an Assistant Professor of Ceramics at Arizona State University and lives and maintains a studio practice in Phoenix, Arizona.

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