In a stunning performance piece, Natia Ser invited fellow artists and residents of Ox-Bow out on the water to share an intimate meal and conversation.
There are a handful of places on campus that radiate a powerful energy, the lagoon being the epicenter of this force. After three summers at Ox-Bow, I am still drawn to its shores. Artist and 2023 LeRoy Neiman Fellow Natia Ser felt her own distinct attraction to the waters. She ended up staging her performance piece on the floating dock, which sits a few yards off the lagoon’s shore and has hosted many other pieces and exhibitions over the years. At this point, it feels almost tradition that at least one takes place every summer on the dock.
Ser’s fascination with water started from a young age. Her mother, concerned about the lack of water signs in Ser’s Chinese horoscope charts, strongly discouraged her daughter from spending time near water—though not without sending her to swimming classes first. Naturally, the allure became that much stronger for Ser.
Natia Ser, Michael Stone, and Shanley Poole sit on the floating dock. Photo by Daniel Fethke.
Of all my memories on campus over the past years, Ser’s performance piece “A Sunday Brunch” stands as one of the most meaningful, perhaps because of the extent to which Ser involved both participants and the lagoon. In some ways, performance feels too distant of a word; it might better be called an immersive experience. Regardless of its title, the entire piece demonstrated Ser’s eye for intention and commitment to care.
Visitors could only venture out to the floating dock on their own or with one other person. I set about with my dear friend and coworker Michael Stone via canoe. When we neared the dock, we secured the vessel and climbed aboard to where Ser sat. Next to her were two containers of food and between her and us were fifteen or so bowls, which Ser had crafted over the summer. She invited us each to choose one. All of the bowls were flipped upside down, showcasing unglazed stoneware with concentric circles marking the gentle elevation of the bowl and also evoking the image of ripples in water. She asked us to choose whichever one called to us.
A bowl filled with a noodle dish sits next to several other bowls positioned upside down, all crafted by Natia Ser. Photo by Natia Ser.
Natia later shared that she viewed these bowls as islands, which called towards a sketch she’d rendered that summer after many sittings observing ripples in the lagoon’s waters. The sketch depicted a collection of islands, each with their own person standing on it. “Different bowls represent different islands, which represent different people.” Ser said. But by clustering them together, they reinforce a paradox that “you are your own identity but we were together briefly.”
When I made my choice, I flipped the bowl over to reveal a smooth glaze of light blue-green with flecks of brown and gray. Each had been formed not by a potter’s wheel, but instead by molding the clay around a rock foraged from campus. The bowl’s deepest point was marked with a seal featuring Chinese characters in sigillary script. I later asked Ser what it meant and she informed me it was a signature of sorts that a family friend had carved. It lists Ser’s Chinese name with an added message. Ser specified, “It doesn’t just say my name, 沅珈, but it also says 無恙… my best way of translating this is 'Natia is unharmed.'” A fitting message for the performance piece, this poeticism was not lost on Ser. “I thought it was very perfect that I stamped it in this project specifically on a bowl that really is about me, kind of in a way transgressing my mother's prohibitions, but also having this assertion that I am safe in a place on the waters where she thought I would be in danger,” she said. Ser also rested in the comfort that “if something did go wrong on the waters, the lovely Ox-Bow community would come to my rescue in no time. A part of me thought that if I drowned, Samson [the lagoon’s giant turtle] would be there to lift me up and push me back on shore.”
Sketches of people standing on islands and swimming from one to another, ultimately inspired the shape of Ser’s ceramic wares. Photo by Natia Ser.
Ser first filled our bowl with fried vermicelli and pork. While we ate, she invited us to share a story with her in exchange for the next dish. Specifically, Ser asked us to give her a story or memory from our pasts that connected our families to food. I spoke of a family recipe passed down through generations, which started with my grandmother’s stepfather. Michael spoke of pizza nights and the recipe his father perfected.
After we finished our noodles, Ser thanked us for our stories and filled our bowls with congee, a Chinese rice porridge. While we sipped, she told us of her mother preparing the dish at home in Hong Kong. Often, it was prepared for Ser when she was sick. Here another layer of poeticism emerges, echoing against the stamp at the bowl’s base. Another translation of the insignia was “Natia is free of illness.” How playfully ironic then to be served the dish that her mother served her on day’s she stayed home with the common cold. “I never planned for everything to come together,” Ser said with a dash of revelry. It was a performance that seemed truly charged by some muse with all its serendipitous connections.
Ser casts the shape of a bowl around a rock found on campus. Photo courtesy of the artist.
I left the dock feeling filled, not just physically by the food but on a soul level. Ser’s gentle voice in harmony with the lapping of the water, the slight sway of the floating dock, the sun warm and insistent. It all coalesced, and the canoe ride to and from the performance accented the intentionality surrounding the entire piece.
The bowl that Ser gifted me with now sits at the desk of my studio from where I currently write. It serves as a soft reminder of the lagoon, of the conversations it has hosted, and all its other provisions.
Ser passes a bowl of congee to a visitor. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Of course, this snapshot on the lagoon is just a fraction of what Ser generously offered to Ox-Bow this summer. It’d be a shame to not at least briefly mention the other marks she left on campus. I had the honor of working alongside her when she joined the Ox-Bow Communications team for the Summer 2023 LeRoy Neiman Fellowship. From the start, she showed a hunger to immerse herself in various studios, take on ambitious video projects, and capture the moments of the season with photo after photo.
She not only has an eye for aesthetics, but a keen reverence that allows her to capture an intangible that makes her photos so alluring. In addition to taking stills, Natia also created two films during her time at Ox-Bow. The first, a stop motion animation, showcased the summer harvests of our food partner Eighth Day Farms.
Ser also collaborated with Print and New Media Studio Manager Madeleine Aguilar to create a video that accompanies Aguilar’s latest single “Ox-Bow - summer 2023” which (in theme with her Ox-Bow EP) focuses on Aguilar’s latest season on campus. While this video has yet to be released, the collaboration is sure to be one that holds the tender, ethereal quality that accompanies both Ser and Aguilar’s work.
Most recently, Ser returned to campus post-fellowship as a photographer documenting our 2023 Longform Residency cohort.
A snapshot from shore shows Natia Ser at a distance, sitting on the floating dock with two visitors. Photo by Daniel Fethke.
Natia Ser is a photography-based artist born and raised in Hong Kong. Her work engages in notions of familiarity and estrangement, longing and belonging from the perspective of an itinerant currently based in Chicago. In December 2023, she will complete her Bachelor of Fine Arts with a concentration in Photography and Visual and Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute, where she was awarded the Presidential Merit Scholarship, Fred Endsley Memorial Fellowship and Graduating Student Leadership Award. She has received the Luminarts Visual Arts Fellowship (Finalist), LeRoy Neiman Fellowship, and Award for Excellence in Illinois College Newspapers (1st Place Feature Photo and 2nd Place Photo Essay). Her work has been exhibited in Hong Kong, Chicago and Japan, with some resting on the shelves of John M. Flaxman Library's Special Collections. She was the translator for Photography. My Passion. My Life., the most recent photobook of late Hong Kong photographer Fan Ho.
The LeRoy Neiman Fellowship Program offers applicants a fully funded opportunity to focus on their work, meet with renowned artists, and grow as members of this unique community. The fellows experience the entire summer session and live on campus where they provide support labor to an arts non-profit and participate in all areas of campus life. By working closely with staff, fellows develop relationships with others who have also made artmaking their lives.
To learn more about the LeRoy Neiman Fellowship Program visit www.ox-bow.org/fellowship-program.
This article was written by Engagement Liaison & Storyteller, Shanley Poole.