Anna Sew Hoy
Anna Sew Hoy (born 1976, Auckland, New Zealand) is an American sculptor based in Los Angeles, California. She utilizes sculpture, ceramics, public art and performance to connect with our environment, and to demonstrate the power found in the fleeting and handmade. Her work has been at the forefront of a re-engagement with clay in contemporary art, and is identified with a critical rethinking of the relationship between art and craft.
Solo presentations of Sew Hoy’s work have been mounted at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Hammer Museum, the Orange County Museum of Art, the MOCA Storefront, Los Angeles; Koenig & Clinton, New York; Aspen Art Museum, Colorado; San Jose Museum of Art; and Sikkema Jenkins & Company, New York. She is a recipient of the 2021 Anonymous Was a Woman Award and in 2018, she was the inaugural Martha Longenecker Roth Distinguished Artist in Residence at the Department of Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego. Sew Hoy’s largest public sculpture to date, Psychic Body Grotto, opened at Los Angeles State Historic Park in Spring 2017, commissioned by Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND) and supported by a 2015 Creative Capital Award for Visual Arts. Her work is in the collections of the Hammer Museum at UCLA, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD).
Life and work
Anna Sew Hoy completed her BFA at the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 1998. Sew Hoy finished her MFA at Bard College in 2008.
In 2019, she was hired full-time at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she is now Associate Professor and Ceramics Area Head in the Department of Art. In 2022, Sew Hoy was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Exhibitions
Solo shows:
- 2023: New Work: Anna Sew Hoy, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
- 2019: The Wettest Letter, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles, CA
- 2017: Anna Sew Hoy: Psychic Grotto Storefront, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), organized by Artist Curated Projects
- 2016: Invisible Tattoo, Koenig & Clinton Gallery, New York, NY
- 2015: “Magnetic Between,” Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO
- 2013: "Planets Making Planets," Performance with Math Bass and Claire Kohne, Commissioned by LAND Nomadic Nights, Los Angeles
- 2011: "Nothing All Day: Anna Sew Hoy,” San Jose Museum of Art, CA
- 2008: "POW!," LAXART, Los Angeles, CA
Group shows:
- 2022: The Hearing Trumpet, part I, organized by Danielle Shang, Galerie Marguo, Paris (catalog)
- 2021: Abstracted Vocabularies, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
- 2018: All Hands On Deck, curated by Kate McNamara, Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles
- 2018: NOMAD: Anna Sew Hoy, Amy Yao and Jennie Jieun Lee, Artist Curated Projects, LA
- 2017: From Funk to Punk: Left Coast Ceramics, curated by Peter Held, Everson Art Museum, Syracuse, NY
- 2017: Hecate, curated by Sara Hantman, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles
- 2016 L.A. Exuberance: New Gifts by Artists, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
- 2015: “Surface of Color,” The Pit, Los Angeles, CA
- 2014: “Made In LA,” Hammer Museum, Los Angeles Museum of Art's Installation
- 2013: "Prospect 2013," Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
- 2013: "And How Are We Feeling Today?" University Art Gallery, UCSD, San Diego
- 2011: "The More Things Change," San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA
- 2009: "Electric Mud," curated by David Pagel, Blaffer Art Museum, Houston, TX
- 2008: "California Biennial 2008," Orange County Museum of Art, CA
- 2008: "Sew Hoy, Lutker, Youngblood," University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara
- 2008: "Now You See It," Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, Colorado
- 2007: "Edens Edge: Fifteen LA Artists,” Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA
- 2006: "Cosmic Wonder," Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco
- 2005: "Diamond Hand Grenade," Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis
Publications
Anna Sew Hoy: Suppose and a Pair of Jeans, Published by RAM Distribution, May 2013, ISBN 978-0983077329