Internationally recognised art and literary critic, writer and cultural producer. Published in ELLE, Glamour, Esquire and Cosmopolitan; member of the Union of Writers.
Low relief has historically occupied the precarious borderland between painting and sculpture. It refuses the total autonomy of three-dimensional volume while declining the flatness of the canvas. For Sunderland-based artist and doctoral researcher Wei Ding, that very ambiguity is not a limitation to be overcome, but an expansive conceptual terrain.
Working with ceramic slabs measuring mere millimetres in depth and flameworked glass structures suspended against gallery walls, Ding interrogates how material, light, and perceptual habit construct architectural depth. Currently featured in the BALTIC Open Submission 2026 at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead (19 September 2026 – 4 April 2027) and shortlisted for the prestigious Stanislav Libenský Award 2026 in Prague, Ding’s practice bridges Jingdezhen’s classical ceramic lineage with contemporary British material experimentation.
1. The Precarious Craft of the Millimetre
In a medium governed by thermal shock and shrinkage physics, constructing flat ceramic reliefs between 0.5 and 1 centimetre in depth is an exercise in extreme technical discipline. At that thickness, moisture loss and kiln vitrification are fraught with edge-warping, bowing, and catastrophic structural fractures.
Ding approaches clay with both mechanical rigor and tactile intuition. Every piece begins with thorough wedging to expel microscopic air pockets. After rolling the clay through a mechanical slab roller to establish a uniform gauge, Ding rolls the slab by hand from alternating directions, ensuring that mechanical stretching is distributed evenly across the clay body. She calibrates her bodies for dimensional resilience: incorporating grog to curb shrinkage and stabilize the matrix, or building a durable substrate of earthenware or crank clay beneath delicate porcelain slips.
Drying requires equal vigilance. Ding dampens the slab perimeter with a sponge to counter edge-drying acceleration, pressing the clay between wooden boards lined with newsprint so moisture evaporates at a gradual, controlled pace. Inside the kiln, she prepares an engineered firing bed: a five-millimetre layer of loose alumina powder spread across the kiln shelf and textured with a serrated tool. These microscopic tracks reduce frictional resistance, allowing the thin ceramic slab to contract freely during firing without catching or tearing.
Wei Ding, In Between (2025). Ceramic low relief, 101 × 65 × 0.5 cm. Photo: Wei Ding.
Yet Ding does not view material resistance as an error. In her Balanced Space series, the differing shrinkage velocities of porcelain and terracotta slips become an active compositional engine. As wet slips dry and contract at divergent speeds, the ceramic surface twists, fissures, and puckers under tensile stress. Although the physical slab measures less than a centimetre thick, these organic deformations introduce substantial spatial depth, embedding the invisible forces of heat and evaporation into the finished relief.
Detail of In Between (2025), showing surface tension, directional shadows, and micro-relief depth. Photo: Wei Ding.
2. Light as an Active Collaborator
For Ding, light is not a passive gallery utility that merely illuminates what is already present; it is a structural component of the work. The perception of depth in low relief depends fundamentally on surface physics—the micro-topography of burnished slips, the matte absorbency of unglazed clay, and the specular highlights of high-fired glaze.
Through systematic studio experimentation, Ding tracks how lighting angles govern spatial reading. While flat ambient illumination flattens low relief into decorative graphic fields, directional spotlights—particularly when angled from above towards the left or right—activate the millimetre-thin crests. Deep micro-shadows pool beneath delicate edges, while raised planes catch flares of light, inviting the eye to perceive three-dimensional corridors where only a fractional ridge exists.
Wei Ding, Into Mirror (2026). Ceramic low relief, 45 × 40 × 0.5 cm. Photo: Wei Ding.
Because gallery illumination rarely mirrors the controlled setup of a studio, each display shifts the relief’s internal equilibrium. Ding welcomes this unpredictability. The work changes as the visitor walks past it, shifting perspectives and generating fleeting reflections. Looking forward, Ding aims to expand these discoveries into architectural ceramics, designing facade reliefs responsive to the diurnal movement of the sun, where natural daylight continuously re-sculpts the surface throughout the day.
Wei Ding, Room In The Mirror (2025). Terracotta low relief, 35 × 23 × 0.5 cm. Photo: Wei Ding.
3. A House Beyond Dimension: Memory and the National Glass Centre
Currently on view at BALTIC Open Submission 2026 in Gateshead (running through 4 April 2027), A House Beyond Dimension (2026, ceramic low relief, 70 × 47 × 0.6 cm) exemplifies Ding’s investigation of architectural illusion. The domestic house serves as an archetype: an intimate structure bound up with memory, emotional shelter, and personal belonging.
Detail of A House Beyond Dimension (2026), combining overglaze painting, reflective glazes, and physical low relief. Photo: Wei Ding.
By integrating low relief with overglaze painting, textural carving, and reflective glazes, Ding blurs the boundary between physical depth and pictorial perspective. Architectural motifs such as windows, doorframes, and mirrored reflections act as perceptual cues. When viewed from several paces away, the work suggests an expansive architectural interior; yet upon stepping closer, perceived rooms dissolve into surface textures and flat painted surfaces, while flat planes catch raking light to expose unexpected physical relief.
The piece also carries deep regional and personal significance. Fabricated in the studios of Sunderland’s National Glass Centre prior to its closure, A House Beyond Dimension preserves a direct continuity with that renowned centre of craft research. Visitors at BALTIC frequently note the disorienting tactile quality of the relief—finding it difficult to determine where physical volume ends and pictorial illusion begins.
4. Limbo, Flameworked Glass, and the Philosophy of Xu–Shi
With ceramics, Ding mainly explores how surface textures, glazing and reflected light influence visual perception. Glass opens a different set of possibilities: transparency, transmitted light and projected shadows.
Her major glass work, Limbo (2026, flameworked glass, 106 × 62 × 0.8 cm), has been selected for the finalists’ exhibition of the Stanislav Libenský Award 2026, opening at the Museum of Prague – House at the Golden Ring (Dům U Zlatého prstenu) from 1 December 2026 to 31 January 2027. Named after the Czech pioneer of contemporary glass sculpture, the Libenský Award honours international innovation in the medium.
Wei Ding, Limbo (2026). Flameworked glass low relief, 106 × 62 × 0.8 cm. Finalist for the Stanislav Libenský Award 2026 in Prague. Photo: Wei Ding.
In Limbo, Ding constructs an open, woven lattice using individual flameworked glass rods. By varying the density, orientation, and layering of the vitreous filaments, she creates a delicate lattice measuring less than a centimetre in depth that projects intricate shadow patterns directly onto the wall. Tiny figurative forms are suspended within and around the glass matrix, acting as solitary markers that blur the boundary between interior and exterior, reality and reverie.
This dialogue between the physical and the intangible connects directly with the classical Chinese aesthetic principle of Xu–Shi Xiangsheng (虚实相生)—the mutual generation of the void (Xu) and the solid (Shi). In classical Chinese landscape painting (Shan Shui), an artist does not fill the silk with dense pigments; a few mountain peaks rising through white mist evoke an entire mountain range extending into the distance. In Ding’s practice, the clay slab or glass rod provides the physical anchor (Shi), but the perceptual volume, domestic memory, and emotional atmosphere reside in the void (Xu), generated collaboratively by light and the viewer’s imagination.
About the Artist:
Wei Ding is a Chinese artist and PhD researcher based in the UK. She holds degrees from the Hubei Institute of Fine Arts (BA) and Jingdezhen Ceramic University (MA), and is currently completing her doctoral research in Glass and Ceramics at the University of Sunderland. Her work has been shortlisted for the Charlotte Fraser Glass & Ceramic Award (2026) and the Zari Art Prize (2025), and selected for the Jingdezhen International Ceramic Art Biennale 2026.
Exhibition Information:
• BALTIC Open Submission 2026: BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK (19 September 2026 – 4 April 2027).
• Stanislav Libenský Award 2026 Finalists’ Exhibition: Museum of Prague – House at the Golden Ring (Dům U Zlatého prstenu), Týnská 630/6, Prague, Czech Republic (1 December 2026 – 31 January 2027).
• Portfolio & Updates: Instagram @wei_ding_ceramics.
