Zhou Xuerong Made Her U.S. Institutional Debut at The Wang Contemporary

Throughout September, The Wang Contemporary, a cultural organization based in New York’s Chinatown, hosted “Guest House: Welcome Home,” a solo exhibition of life-size wax sculptures by Guangdong-based artist Zhou Xuerong. The show marked Xuerong’s first institutional presentation in the U.S. and the organization’s second exhibition since launching in February 2026 with a performative installation by the art collective MSCHF. The show’s ten sculptures placed familiar female icons from Western popular culture inside scenes of everyday Chinese domestic life, sipping tea, practicing calligraphy, cooking with a wok, playing the erhu, each dressed in a silk qipao whose own history traces a path from Qing Dynasty nobility to 20th-century Shanghai tailoring.

“I visited Zhou’s studio in Guangdong earlier this year and was immediately struck by her extraordinary craftsmanship and how much emotion her wax figures elicited,” says Alexander Wang, who co-founded The Wang Contemporary with his mother, Ying. “This exhibition asks us to consider how Chinese traditions, once mocked and derided, will continue to reshape our global imagination.” For Xuerong, whose 30-year career includes more than 900 sculptures produced through her studio Grand Orient Wax Art, the exhibition doubled as an invitation to sit with discomfort. “When someone encounters these familiar faces in an unexpected cultural setting,” she says, “I hope they begin to question not only what they’re looking at, but what it means to be a guest in someone else’s culture.”