1,000 Ways to Hold: A New Work By Erika Chong Shuch

1,000 Ways to Hold is the culmination of a year-long participatory project by Stanford Arts’ 2025–26 Visiting Artist Erika Chong Shuch, rooted in conversation and clay. Developed in response to a moment shaped by loneliness, fragmentation, and uncertainty, the project proposes a tender, human-scale intervention: two people at a time sit together, shape ceramic bowls in pairs, and reflect on the question, What have you held, and what has held you? Created across campus in classrooms, community spaces, and everyday gathering sites, the bowls are embedded with digital traces that capture the intimacy of these shared encounters. In this exhibition at the Anderson Collection, the bowls are gathered and activated, inviting visitors to listen, touch, and engage with a living archive of connection. Together, they form both an artwork and a collective portrait—evidence of how small acts of making and listening can hold memory, care, and community.

The exhibition will be on view in the Wisch Family Gallery from April 2 – August 17, 2026

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Erika Chong Shuch is a choreographer, director, and performance maker whose work bridges experimental performance and social practice through inventive forms of audience engagement. Centering people and labor often overlooked, her projects reimagine where and how art-making begins. She is the founder of For You, a performance group that brings strangers together through experiences ranging from intimate encounters to large-scale public gatherings. Erika has been commissioned by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Court Theatre (Chicago), The Momentary, Cantor Arts Center, and Edge on the Square (San Francisco). Her work has been supported by Creative Capital, New England Foundation for the Arts, and the Gerbode Foundation. She was a 2022–23 Bay Area Fellow at Headlands Center for the Arts and is currently co-creating The Table with Mei Ann Tao and the San Francisco Civic Theater Project with Jonathan Moscone.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

1,000 Ways to Hold: A new work by Erika Chong Shuch is organized by the Anderson Collection at Stanford University in collaboration with the Office of the Vice President for the Arts. Thank you to the core team of individuals whose dedication and expertise were essential to the realization of this project, as well as to the incredible community whose hands shaped the work in this exhibition. We gratefully acknowledge generous support provided by the Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson Charitable Foundation, The Draper Foundation, Melissa and Trevor Fetter, Carloyn and William Langelier, William Reller and Kristin E. Klint, and the Office for Religious & Spiritual Life.

This exhibition was made possible through the significant commitment of the following individuals: Ellen Oh (producer), Edi Dai (producer), Hideo Mabuchi (ceramics management), Sean Riley (machine design), Crow Cianciola (machine fabrication), Werd Pace (sound design), Tiffany Steinwert (dialogic facilitator), Taylor Jones (videographer), Niharika Gunturu (lead electronics design), Eito Murakami (sound design), Xinyuan Pu (facilitation), Caitlin Main (dramaturg), Yinuo Yu (data specialist), Jason Wilson Navarro-Lopez (data specialist), Heechan Lim (videographer assistant), Miley Sinantha-Hu (project assistant), Jacob Eldred (mechanical design), and Lily Thai (electronics design assistant).

Ceramics production: Sally Jackson, Ryan Schnirel, Grace Potter, Sarah Logan, Scott Parady, Casey Beck, Joan Lin, and Phil Park.

Workshop coordination: Claudia Dorn, Tyler Brooks, Claire Kuan, Ilana Goldhaber-Gordon, Ken N. Lee, Jessica Castillo, Amara Tabor-Smith, Jazlyn Patricio-Archer, Benjamin Lundberg Torres Sanchez, Kim Beil, Michaela Hulstyn, Jessi Pipert, Jessica Gonzales Chu, Mushi Wooseong James, Craig Adams, Natasha Noel, Sophina McDaniel, Karina Kloos, and Ken Becker.