Unfinished Surfaces: Material, Tension, and Tactility in Miao Tan’s Practice

By NOAH BECKER May 12th, 2026

Miao Tan is a London-based Chinese artist and a graduate of the Royal College of Art. In her practice, painting and lacquer exist as parallel mediums rather than a linear progression. Her work does not begin with a fixed concept or aim toward a predetermined outcome; instead, it unfolds through sustained engagement with materials, allowing forms to gradually emerge through the process.

In her work, tactility, the body, and intuition consistently occupy a central role. Whether in sculpture or works on paper, she foregrounds traces of touch and the residues left by the making process. In a recent piece, Brush as Skin II, horsehair is wrapped, bound, and suspended on the wall, presenting a state that hovers between falling and support. The material is not fully controlled, allowing the form to remain in a liminal, not-yet-finished condition.

 
Brush as Skin II, Installation view, Skin 100&1, Milan Design Week, Alcova, 2026

Looking back at her trajectory, her earlier works on paper remained largely within a two-dimensional space, using lines, marks, and collage to record the flow of gesture and intuition. In Headless Flies (2024), scattered insects, fragmented bodies, and hybrid image elements intertwine, forming a nonlinear, almost uncontrolled visual narrative.

 Miao Tan, Headless Flies, 2024

This ongoing attention to tactility and corporeality takes on different forms across media. On paper, it is registered as visual traces; in sculpture, it is transformed into a more immediate, embodied experience.

Through her sustained attention to touch and material response, lacquer gradually becomes a key medium in her practice, further intensifying this state of instability and becoming.

In its traditional context, lacquer is associated with control and completion. It seals and protects, and through repeated polishing produces a smooth, stable surface, ultimately serving an object defined as “finished.”

In Miao’s practice, however, this function is shifted. Lacquer no longer brings form to completion, but instead intervenes in and disrupts its development. In works such as Held (2025) and Upright (2025), fabric, through its interaction with lacquer, is repeatedly coated, its form gradually distorted and fixed. Lacquer is no longer a surface applied onto a structure; it becomes a condition that holds the work in a state of tension, rather than allowing it to resolve into stability.

 Miao Tan, Held, 2025

 Miao Tan, Upright, 2025

Within this process, control remains inherently incomplete. Materials resist, shift, and at times even fail, yet these states are not corrected; instead, they are absorbed into the work, allowing it to remain open and indeterminate.

Her practice unsettles the fundamental assumption in craft that “completion” is the endpoint. It resists resolving the work into a stable, definable object. Rather than emphasising refinement and stability or reinforcing the authority of the finished piece, it redirects attention toward states that remain unstable and in flux.

Miao’s work does not seek to be understood as a technique, nor does it present lacquer as a cultural signifier. Instead, it calls for a different mode of viewing, one grounded in proximity, duration, and the perception of change. Meaning is not sealed within the object, but gradually unfolds through the encounter with the material.