Shiyuan Xu was born in Hangzhou, P.R China. She received her BA (Ceramics) from China Academy of Art in 2012, and an MFA (Ceramics) from Arizona State University in 2016. Shiyuan is a 2017 Ceramics Monthly Emerging Artist and 2021 NCECA Emerging Artist Fellow. She has also been awarded multiple prestigious artist residencies.

Shiyuan Xu’s work highlights the beauty and fragility, rhythm and harmony of natural life forms at the microscopic level. She reinterprets scientific phenomena into art forms. Working primarily with porcelain paper clay, Xu hand builds organic skeleton-like structures with slabs within an intimate scale. Her glazes drip to become a part of the whole structure with added layers giving the work a skin-like surface. Xu tries to reveal the neglected world of tiny things becoming visible and express an appreciation of nature and life.