Who Is Renee So? Artist Breaking Gender Stereotypes Through Sculptures

Renee So is a London-based artist from Hong Kong who is challenging gender stereotypes of society with her scriptures and woven art pieces. The artist uses the historical representation of the male species to mock toxic masculinity.

So got her start while working part-time jobs after graduation while working on her hand-knit art pieces and lived a bohemian life. She uses woven and knitted textiles and ceramics to represent prehistoric cultural references and the patriarchal approach of prehistoric art. Her artwork symbolises male authority, colonial history as well as gender representation.

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Who Is Renee So?

1. Born in 1974 in Hong Kong, Renee So is a 1997 Fine Arts graduate from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.
2. The artist was raised in Melbourne, Australia and has been displaying her sculptures and art pieces for more than a decade around the world and is well-known for the message behind her interesting art.
3. She is currently represented by East London-based art gallery Kate MacGarry.
4. Her sculptures and woven art pieces show beards, booze and boots as a part of toxic masculinity that has been preached over centuries. While she uses traditional male symbols as a satire of gender stereotypes, her female sculptures have more agency like having breasts shaped like the hidden clitoris in unglazed ceramics. She combines historic and modern ideas through art.
5. So has featured in 100 Sculptors Of Tomorrow, 2020 edition by Thames & Hudson publications, Vitamin C: Clay + Ceramic in Contemporary Art, 2017 edition and Vitamin T: Threads and Textiles in Contemporary Art, 2019 edition by Phaidon publications.
6. Her work has been a part of many prestigious exhibitions around the world like The London Open at London's Whitechapel Gallery in 2018, Transparent Things by Goldsmiths CCA in London in 2020 and One Day, Something Happens: Paintings Of People in 2016 at Leeds Art Gallery in UK. She had two solo exhibitions in 2019-20 at Henry Moore Institute in Leeds and De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill on Sea.