Leah Liu Yutong: SUSURRUS

Thirty spoke

Share one hub.

Adapt the nothing therein to the purpose in hand, and you will have the use of the cart. Knead clay in order to make a vessel. Adapt the nothing therein to the purpose in hand, and you will have the use of the vessel. Cut out doors and windows in order to make a room. Adapt the nothing therein to the purpose in hand, and you will have the use of the room.

– Laozi, Tao Te Ching, verse XI

A cart moves by virtue of its empty center. A vessel holds because of its hollow. A room is made by what is cut out–by openings that allow entry, air, and light. It is the condition of absence that renders a generative

structure.

Form gives structure. Emptiness gives function. As Laozi alludes to, “the use” here emerges from a productive tension between what is present and what is withheld, where solidity and aperture operate in tandem and

where absence is not a negotiation but an activator. Leah Liu Yutong’s practice rests on the understanding that empty space is a condition for resonance and modulation. Working across sculpture and sound, Liu configures hollow modules into recursive assemblages that resist closure and stability. It is from this orientation that “susurrus 聲聲私” emerges, extending the inquiry into how forms speak through what they withhold. The title “susurrus” names a soft murmur: a breath passing through a body, a wind brushing against an opening, an air

moving through a cavity. It is a sound that lingers.

Hollow chambers and folded enclosures seem to hold air as much as material. Liu’s works begin with a three dimensional sensation. Forms are felt before they are named, often arriving from infrastructures or enclosing gestures–structures that contain, surround, or quietly support. The images are not flat. She sees them as volumes shaped by weight and balance, and feels a need to touch, to make, to test them through the body within the space she inhabits. Trained in sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Liu brings these sensations to forms of being. She utilizes repetition and misalignment to create absence and open gaps where forms loosen and new possibilities emerge. In this way, Liu’s practice resonates with Taoism philosophy, that ideas of “the Way (道)” and “Wu wei (无为)”, where making unfolds through attentiveness and intuition rather than force.

“susurrus 聲聲私” brings together seven works developed from Liu’s time at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and her current residency at the NARS Foundation. Together, the works trace a vertical progression that moves from forms anchored to the ground pieces that climb the wall. Corners thicken, folds accumulate weight, and objects are allowed to hold themselves. Liu’s “susurrus 聲聲私” yields to gravity, guiding how each form arrives and remains.

To dwell is to resonate; to make is to hold space for air, being, and relation.

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