At nine in the morning, the studio is already warm. Mei Lin Tan lifts a shallow bowl from a shelf and runs one finger along a hairline seam. It is not a flaw she plans to hide. The line records where two pieces of clay met and learned to hold together.
Her newest body of work began with conversations around kitchen tables. She asked six families to describe the objects they had carried through migration: a chipped rice bowl, a brass spoon, a jar once used for medicine. None was valuable in a conventional sense. Together, they formed an intimate map of movement through Southeast Asia.
“The object is never the whole story. It is a door left slightly open.”
Tan does not reproduce these objects. Instead, she translates their proportions and the gestures attached to them. A thumb pressed into a rim becomes an index of care; a slightly uneven base recalls a table in a house that no longer exists.
