‘To Build a Bamboo World’ Workshop with Sophie Mak-Schram
About this Event
As part of her residency at esea contemporary, Sophie Mak-Schram invites participants to a collaborative workshop exploring zhizha, the traditional Chinese practice of crafting bamboo and paper sculptures for funerary and celebratory rituals. Historically burned as offerings for ancestors, these ephemeral structures carry histories of migration, repression and transformation, having been driven underground during the Cultural Revolution before continuing across diasporic communities, including in Hong Kong.
Working with metal, masking tape, and daily objects, this workshop encourages collective memory to form part of the artist’s ongoing research into how zhizha might speak to contemporary questions of ecological futures, impermanence, and social connection. Together, participants will explore the material possibilities of sculpture-making while sharing stories, memories and speculative approaches to building ‘other bamboo worlds’ (past, present or future).
Developed in dialogue with Manchester’s Chinese and ESEA communities, the residency also draws on research into local museum collections, including funerary paper objects held within the city’s galleries and archives.
Booking is essential to attend this event.
About Sophie Mak-Schram
Sophie Mak-Schram is a Cardiff-based artist whose practice spans artistic research, radical pedagogies and collaborative, place-based work. Engaging questions of power, collectivity, knowledge and future-making, her work is shaped by experiences of cultural difference, coloniality, race and gender.
Working across writing, print, ceramics, audio and installation, she often uses the metaphor of the ‘tool’ to explore alternative ways of relating to one another, to institutions and to place.
Recent projects include To Shift a Stone (2025–26), commissioned by National Museum Wales and Chapter Arts Centre, and Stretching Thresholds, Holding Streams (2024–25), in collaboration with Jeanne van Heeswijk and commissioned by Migros Museum of Contemporary Art. Mak-Schram is currently Lecturer in Fine Art at Cardiff Metropolitan University and part of BAK Basecamp for Tactical Imaginaries.
Image credits:
- Sophie Mak-Schram and George H. Wale, ‘through more hands hold’, from ‘To Shift a Stone’, installation view, National Museum Cardiff, photograph by Dan Weill.
- ‘Listening, listening’, 2026, workshop for Open School East. Photograph courtesy of the artist.
- ‘Shell’, work in progress, photograph courtesy of the artist.
- Sophie Mak-Schram and George H. Wale, ‘through more hands hold’, from ‘To Shift a Stone’, installation view, National Museum Cardiff, photograph by Dan Weill.
- ‘To Shift a Stone’ (2025), installation view, National Museum Cardiff, photograph by Dan Weill.
- Sophie Mak-Schram and Parham Ghalamdar, ‘Fizzy Brown Dream’, installation view, ‘To Shift a Stone’, National Museum Cardiff. Photograph by Dan Weill.
- ‘on hold on’ (2025), photo by Polly Thomas.
About esea contemporary
esea contemporary is the UK’s only non-profit art centre specialising in presenting and platforming artists and art practices that identify with and are informed by East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) cultural backgrounds.
esea contemporary is situated in an award-winning building in the heart of Manchester, home to one of the largest East Asian populations in the UK. Since its inauguration as a community-oriented visual arts festival in 1986, esea contemporary has continuously evolved to establish itself as a dynamic and engaging space for cross-cultural exchanges in the British art scene, as well as in a global context.
esea contemporary aims to increase the visibility of contemporary art practices from the East and Southeast Asian communities and their diasporas. It is a site for forward-thinking art programmes that beyond exhibitions also include commissions, research, residencies, publishing, and a wide range of vibrant public events. esea contemporary values creativity, compassion, interconnectedness, and collectivity in implementing its mission.
Learn more at: www.eseacontemporary.org
Photo by Joe Smith.
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
GBP 0.00 to GBP 3.00
