Singapore ceramic artist Jessie Lim returns with first solo in 15 years

[SINGAPORE] In the age of social media and “look at me” culture, artist Jessie Lim did something almost radical – she kept working for 15 years and didn’t show her art to anyone.

The Singapore ceramic artist – a veteran figure in the local clay scene – simply stayed in her studio, teaching, firing kilns, and making work. Exhibitions were always “next year”, she says. Then Covid cancelled one in Japan. Then another year slipped by. 

“Next year became next year,” she recalls, “and before I knew it, it became 15 years.”

Now, she’s set to return with her largest exhibition to date at the Esplanade’s White Room, with more than 200 works spanning a decade and a half of patient art-making. The works emerged during an absence that looks less like retreat than incubation.

“I think 15 years can really develop your style,” Lim says. “I can see the works evolving. That’s very rewarding for me.”

Her practice today is more contemplative, she explains – slower, quieter, less anxious about the market. Without the pressure to produce for exhibitions, she allowed forms to mature at their own pace. The result is sculptural pieces that lean towards fluidity and stillness rather than spectacle.

Lim began, like many ceramicists, with functional ware such as cups, bowls and vases.

Sculpture came later, nudged along by a moment she still recounts with awe: “(The late Singapore sculptor) Ng Eng Teng came to my show in the late 1990s and spent an hour silently studying my works – before telling me, simply, that I should make sculpture. When I told him I didn’t know how, he replied: ‘Just close up a pot.’”

She took the advice to heart.

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Today, roughly 80 per cent of the works in her upcoming exhibition are sculptural. They emerge from what she describes as an inner instinct rather than a predetermined concept. “You have to listen to your inner self,” she says. “There’s no one to tell you what you should make.”

But the polish of the finished objects belies the labour behind them. Some of Lim’s most ambitious series push the medium to the edge of its tolerance – and her own.

A tall, flower-like form she calls Jungle Flower, featured prominently in the exhibition, demanded incredible perseverance. Built upward in sections, it shifted unpredictably during firing, slumping to one side and undoing hours of careful calibration. 

Another series, Stone Knits, is even more punishing. Lim begins with a dense, solid mass of clay, only to hollow it out, split it apart and reassemble it before texturing the surface painstakingly with combs and pointed tools. The repetitive motion left her fingers numb: she developed trigger finger and had to seek medical treatment. 

“After that series, my fingers all got numb,” she says matter-of-factly.

Such physical tolls are occupational hazards of a practice built on repetition and touch.

Lim works in series, often spending months refining a single form until it reaches what she considers its most resolved state. Each body of work presents its own structural challenges – weight, balance, the risk of cracking or explosion in the kiln. 

“Clay,” she notes, “has a life of its own. You adapt to it, negotiate with it, sometimes lose to it.”

Exhibiting remains “a very scary event”, she says – even after decades in the field. But time has recalibrated her relationship to risk and reception. “The work itself has given me enough pleasure,” she says. “I feel like it is my voice and I’ve spoken through the clay.”

Jessie Lim’s exhibition runs from Mar 5 to 8 at the White Room, Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay. All works are for sale. Admission is free.