Vivian Hou

Statement

Vivian Hou is a conceptual and visual artist practicing across works on paper, spatial installations, 3D design, and rave happenings. Her works are remnants of a search for transcendence before the technological, architectural, spiritual, and biological absurdities of our time.

Hou’s practice digs into ancient understandings of the cosmos, often drawn from Daoist texts, and renders these concepts in an atemporal visual language where ink and charcoal join with 3D material simulations, AI generations, and internet memes in a multi-stepped process. By joining sound, lighting, and interactivity at architectural scale, her installation works are conceptual environments, meeting points of ethereal worlds within the digital and spiritual realms that underlie our reality.

GlogauAIR Project

During the GlogauAIR program, Vivian will be working on a new body of multimedia visual work that explores our collective alienation from sublime universal forces, caused by the complex and absurd conditions of our time. Through combining ink and charcoal illustration, found image, and live organisms, the series links ancient conceptions of imagined realms (the ether, heaven) and contemporary ones (digital space). The work explores a desire to find release through departing from a harsh reality, an amalgamation of material and conceptual themes within Hou’s larger body of work on ancient cosmology and the spiritual aspects of technology.

CV Summary

Education

• 2017-2021 BA Architecture and Computer Science, Wellesley College
• Minor in Design, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Focus on Modern Art History (Chinese Contemporary Art) and Interactive Architecture; graduated Magna Cum Laude.

Exhibitions and Projects

• 2023
  • 10 – “The Playground” , group show, 10 Cartwheels, New York.
  • 07 – “Spring Show”, group show, Wave Collective Space, San Francisco.
  • 06 – “red dust rises as four walls, i pierce through the haze” 红尘四起，穿云破雾, solo show, _p_a_l_l_a_s, San Francisco.
• 2020 06- Design Computation Course Show, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston.

Residencies and Awards

• 2024-2025 Alice C. Cole ‘42 Awards, Wellesley College Art Department, Massachusetts.
• 2024 GlogauAIR Art Residency, GlogauAIR, Online/Berlin.
• 2023 Summer Resident, _p_a_l_l_a_s, San Francisco.

Work Experience

• 2021-2024 YouTube, Product Designer, New York, USA.
• 2021 Summer Jiang Miao Studio, Studio Assistant, Beijing, China.
• 2020 Spring Jason Bruges Studio, Design & Production Intern, London, UK.
• 2018 Summer Christie’s, Impressionist and Modern Art Intern, New York, USA.

Gallery