Arrival Art Fair: Rachele Frison, Cathy Lu, Sharmistha Ray

Cathy Lu creates ceramic sculptures and installations that manipulate traditional Chinese imagery and presentation as a way to deconstruct assumptions about Chinese diasporic identity and cultural authenticity. Unpacking how experiences of immigration, cultural hybridity, and cultural assimilation become part of American identity is central to her work. 

Lu received a BA and BFA from School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She is currently a SMFA Professor of the Practice in Ceramics at Tufts University. She has participated in artist-in-residence programs at Kohler Arts Center, Bemis Center for the Arts, Recology San Francisco, Greenwich House Pottery NYC, and the Archie Bray Foundation. Her work has been exhibited widely, at The Armory Show, New York, NY; Art Basel Hong Kong; SFMOMA, Berkeley Art Center, Chinese Culture Center, Kadist, Kala Arts Center, Manetti Shrem Museum, Root Division, all in the Bay Area, CA; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; Prospect 6 New Orleans; MCA Denver. Lu was a 2019 Asian Cultural Council/Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation Fellow, and is a 2022 SFMOMA SECA Award winner. Lu’s work has recently been included in the collection of the Asian Art Museum San Francisco, SFMOMA, the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, Kadist, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

Sharmistha Ray (they/them) is a visual artist and Estella Loomis McCandless Assistant Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University. Their artistic practice delves into the complex inheritance of multiple cultures through their queer identity and modes of historical and contemporary abstraction. Working primarily in painting and drawing, they have also made work in sculpture, installation and electronic media, curated projects in India and the United States, and written prolifically for significant publications and journals on critical and theoretical frameworks in contemporary art practice.

In addition to their solo work, they co-founded the spiritualist feminist art collective Hilma’s Ghost which acts as a collaborative model for research, artistic production, pedagogy, and community. Ray and the collective’s work have been featured in solo and group exhibitions and projects internationally at The Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; Marlborough Gallery, New York, NY; Galería RGR, Mexico City; Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington, CT; Secrist|Beach, Chicago, IL; The Shepherd, Detroit, MI; The Museu de Arte de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; Pen + Brush, New York, NY; Kent State University, Kent, OH; Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Queens, NY; The Parallax Center, Portland, OR; The Armory Show, New York, NY; Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, NY; Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai, India; and many others. In April 2025, the collective completed a permanent 600 sq. ft. glass mosaic mural at Grand Central Station in New York City commissioned by MTA Arts & Design. Ray received a dual degree MFA in Painting and MS in Theory, Criticism and History of Art, Design and Architecture from Pratt Institute and BA from Williams College.