STEPH HUANG

Early years and background

Huang was born in 1990 in Taiwan, growing up between Changhua and Yuanlin before relocating to the United Kingdom, where she has lived for more than a decade. She completed an MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art in London in 2021, consolidating a multidisciplinary practice that spans sculpture, film, and sound.

Huang lives and works in London, drawing on first-hand experiences of migration, service work, and cooking to connect Taiwanese vernacular culture with the infrastructures of European cities. These biographical crossings underpin her focus on everyday sites of exchange—from convenience stores to food stalls—as spaces where histories of colonialism, global trade, and care quietly intersect.

Steph Huang artworks

Steph Huang’s artworks explore how ordinary objects, architectural fixtures, and food-industry materials carry embedded stories of labour, extraction, and desire. Working with glass blowing, casting, carpentry, film, and sound, Huang stages modest materials—wire racks, shelving, signage, deli counters—so they appear at once functional and strangely theatrical, prompting viewers to reconsider their relationship to consumption and the environment.

Food systems and global trade

Projects such as See, See Sea at Tate Britain transform research into scallop diving and the seafood supply chain into immersive installations that connect industrial food production with fragile marine ecosystems. Huang’s sculptural arrangements often juxtapose hand-made glass forms with mass-produced packaging, pointing to tensions between artisanal skill and large-scale distribution in contemporary commerce.

Everyday architectures and vernacular display

In exhibitions including There is nothing old under the sun and I will see you when the week ends, Huang draws on the aesthetics of corner shops, market stalls, and informal signage to explore how people improvise space under economic pressure. By re-creating display units, counters, and storage systems in the gallery, she highlights the overlooked choreography of stocking, cooking, and selling that underpins daily urban life.

Storytelling, migration, and humour

Huang’s work also engages autobiographical storytelling, using playful details—such as enlarged snails in the public sculpture Den Den The Mushi—to address themes of movement, slowness, and adaptation. Throughout her practice, she balances dry humour with careful observation, allowing installations to evoke questions of home, identity, and belonging without prescribing a single reading.

Select awards and accolades

• Grand Prize, Taipei Art Awards, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan, 2022
• Henry Moore Foundation Artist Award, 2023
• Mark Tanner Sculpture Award (21st winner), 2023–24

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Steph Huang exhibitions

Steph Huang has been the subject of solo exhibitions and group exhibitions at institutions and galleries in the United Kingdom, Europe, and Asia.

Select solo exhibitions

• Lili Deli, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan, 2025
• There is nothing old under the sun (Mark Tanner Sculpture Award exhibition), Standpoint Gallery; toured to esea contemporary, Manchester, and Cross Lane Projects, Kendal, 2024–25
• The Water that Bears the Boat, E-WERK Freiburg, Germany, 2024
• I will see you when the week ends, Public Gallery, London, United Kingdom, 2023
• A Great Increase in Business Is On Its Way, Goldsmiths CCA, London, United Kingdom, 2022

Select group exhibitions

• Sounds of Babel, C-Lab, Taipei, Taiwan, 2025
• Bloomberg New Contemporaries, South London Gallery, London, and Humber Street Gallery, Hull, United Kingdom, 2022
• Group exhibition, Galerie du Monde, Hong Kong, 2023
• Exhibitions at San Mei Gallery, Belmacz, and Bloc Projects in the United Kingdom, 2020–21

To be kept up to date with upcoming exhibitions featuring Steph Huang follow them on Ocula. You can also view her exhibitions on Ocula here.

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Ocula | 2026